Events

The event was intended for prime ministers and presidents rather than royals, Mr Brown said but:

" if the queen wanted to attend these events or if any member of the royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible,".

Gordon Brown speaking on the BBC earlier today.

A former, and possibly the most popular after Winston Churchill, United Kingdom Prime Minister made a very famous remark about events.

Attempting to insult our Head of State is an attempt to insult us all - whether we are royalists or republicans.

Mr Brown will represent the UK at the events in Normandy, to mark those who died storming the beaches 65 years ago. We are to be represented by a liar and a coward.

Brown is a Disgraced and Repellent Champion of Political and Democratic Transparency

The increasingly distasteful means used to keep New Labour in power by the europeanist political elites mean that nothing must be allowed to challenge Brown, whose downfall would result immediately in a general election. So we watch some cabinet ministers left in place who should have been dismissed months ago and others left in place who should have been dismissed weeks ago. The Prime Minister is an exploiter of Commons expenses rules that he has used to refurbish his house and his London flat. More than forty holders of government office, senior and junior ministers, are being named and shamed in the long stream of revelations from the unedited Commons expenses data.

And the person at the centre of this sewer of a government parades before us 'vowing' to clean the world in which he thrives and has contributed so much to create.

Angels would weep at the wreckage of an economy, brought down by Brown and Balls and their impoverished understandings and bloated ambitions. The deliberate dismantling of financial regulation this pair effected to permit the looting of the taxpayers, now chronicled by the House of Lords enquiry, is both on public view, and spreading public suffering among those who might most have hoped a Labour government would have their interests and concerns at heart. The rest of us can look after ourselves, even with New Labour in power, but not those who are old, or young, or sick, or poor, or poorly educated and skilled.

The European elites with what they would regard as the misfortune to have their power base in England, will accept even Balls (who currently passes his days maximising his Parliamentary expenses and interfering in the lives of English children), if they can avoid having their New Labour front thrown from office.

So how angry do we have to get? All we are saying is let us vote.

Little Hope for Vauxhall

Never again do working people in this country want to stand on the sidelines while their industrial future is decided by the German Government, an Italian car maker and an AustroCanadian parts manufacturer backed by a Russian oligarch and a state-supported Russian bank.

Labour is not funded by the trade unions and elected by working people to be a power base for the ambitions of global post democratic governance apparatchiks. There hasn't been the slightest attempt to force the inclusion of the many countries' workers involved in the General Motors collapse in the US/GM/German/FIAT/Magna negotiations. Now Mandelson starts to ask for job guarantees, tries to tie them onto potential government funding, pretends to be in the know.

No he isn't. All ready Magna are raising the numbers of jobs that must be lost from 300 to at least 11,000. All ready German plants are secure but no other country can say other than that there is excess capacity and we all knew that, as Mandelson now admits. At least FIAT offered an industrial solution to an industrial problem, and told it as it is. And with FIAT the job losses would have been fewer. How long before the German workers find they too have lost the jobs and, as well, have been mulcted of nearly two billion euros by an oligarch, a Russian state bank, and a motor parts manufacturer?

Our governing regime is nothing to do with Labour and everything to do with political elitist individualism.

Communist Corpse Found in the Charite in Berlin

Der Spiegel is reporting that the corpse of Rosa Luxemburg has been found in the basement of the Charite in Berlin. Headless and handless the corpse displays all the appropriate characteristics after being submitted to a computer tomography test. The corpse had been water-logged, had congenital damage to a hip, and had one leg longer than the other. It once was a woman 40 to 50 years old at he time of her death.

After she was shot in the Tiergarten her body was weighted with stones at hands and feet and thrown into the Landwehr canal. As the corpse was not found until after the winter ice had melted it is assumed the extremities had been lost during the five-month submersion. The body of Karl Liebknecht, who was found, tortured and then murdered at the same time as Luxemburg was taken to the Charite. Autopsy reports from the period suggest that another corpse was substituted for that of Luxemburg. The graves of the two were emptied in the 1930s and the corpses never found, although they remain places of pilgrimage for revolutionary communists from all over the world.

During the nightmare years of the German Democratic Republic visitors to the GDR dictator Honecker would receive a persian carpet portraying Luxemburg and Liebknecht. When the Lives of Others was at last overthrown in 1989 these carpets became valued memorabilia of that horrid regime. An Angelic friend brought us one from Germany. It is designed with loops so that it hangs on the wall like a tapestry. No trampling the faces of the revolution by putting it on the floor.

Vote, Vote Against What You Most Despise By Voting for the Best Opponent

Labour-renouncers, people who have a view that the role of government is to make provision for the weakest and ensure that everyone has a reasonable chance in life, who believe in state education and a free health service at the point of use, who don't care what colour people are and are interested in other cultural traditions, used to vote Liberal when Labour showed its authoritarian viciousness and propensity to economic incompetence.

So the collapsing Labour regime is offering proportional representation, seats in the cabinet, alliance for a centre left party of the good against grasping capitalist wickedness. Only this time there are better places to go. This time those who are repelled by the predominant characteristics of realised socialism, authoritarian centralist, post democratic Labour can avoid voting Conservative even when by no means do they wish to vote for Labour's junior wing Liberal Democrats.

The United Kingdom Independence Party is a front runner for the European elections. Green matters to many formerly acquiescent to the rest of Labour's war-mongering, torturing, collectivist domineering state aspects. If you can have Green and decency, why vote Labour? Scotland of course is off and away with the Scottish National Party which is so very much what so many Labour former voters had hoped would be the national Labour party in the 1997 New Dawn. Unfortunate they didn't recognise the terminologies of New Labour and the Third Way.

So even though Brown might try to burst out anew once more, tired old hag pushing sixty, with tired old Liberal Democrats who've been trying since Heath to hitch their wagon to the European 'destroy the nation state and democracy' hegemony under which England has suffered, choose another grouping, not Liberal Democrat. The numbers from the last polls point to voters abandoning the Liberal Democrats as fast as they are abandoning New Labour, this time there really is a vote to be used and counted. Any group seeking alliance with Brown or New Labour must be abandoned.

Brown might still try to use force. They are so very close to ending universal suffrage and democratic disruption of rule by elite.

Look Who Has Turned on the Conservatives

Just look - at the people who the Guardian seems to think might have any effect on Conservative policy in Europe today.

Patten, Brittan, Tugendhat, and two former heads of the Foreign Office who were in office during the negotiations and implementation of the Maastricht Treaty. Blue New Labour. Intent on installing the post democratic progressive governance by permanent elites of administrators that Blair/Brown so favour and which has brought our country to near collapse.

They have turned on the Conservative Leader who is as concerned as the electorate about this movement to end our nation state and our democracy. By their friends shall we know them. These people are lauded by the Guardian.

The Conservatives have stated there will be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the United Kingdom if it has not been accepted by all 27 member states of the European Union by the time the Conservatives come to power. Even if it has Mr Cameron has declared he will not let matters rest there. He is in the Czech Republic and will be in Warsaw tomorrow. Neither the Czech or Polish Republics have deposited their acceptance of the Lisbon Treaty in Rome, the final act that signifies acceptance of the Lisbon Treaty by a Member State. Germany continues to await the rulings on two fundamental issues on the rights of individual German citizens and their violation by the Lisbon Treaty, from the German Constitutional Court. Germany has not ratified or deposited the papers in Rome. Ireland has yet to try another referendum, the only Member State that has held one, in an attempt to overturn the No vote received last year.

Kangaroo Courts and Labour's Culture of Bullying

Asking Members to consider repaying money paid out in expenses claims or have the Conservative whip withdrawn is one thing. The Member can do it or not and choose losing the whip or not.

Having the NEC set up a committee of the Labour Party before which Labour Members are required to 'appear' to answer 'accusations' on their expenses claims, and are told that they are to announce that they are standing down if those claims are ruled unacceptable is quite another.

The Evening Standard reports that 'Commons officials are to be asked by police for an explanation of the rules governing MPs' expenses. The move is part of an exercise to help Scotland Yard's fraud squad decide on whether to launch a full-scale inquiry.'

If Members have broken the law, and the step by the police seems to be very sensible in deciding whether there is something to be investigated, then any expense-taking that falls under the police remit is not for essentially private bodies to be judging or exacting responses. There are laws governing employment and its terms and conditions too which need to be observed. Many Members have stated that expenses claims were guided by the Commons Fees Office and, in the Labour Members' case, that they were encouraged to claim the maximum by Party whips. If claims are not illegal, which is what is being determined by the police, there can hardly be grounds for internal disciplinary action leading to loss of employment because they are politically inconvenient.

Labour acted late and badly over all this. And acted after putting pressure on every level of parliamentary politician up to and including the Speaker to prevent its revelation. When they were forced to act they acted wrongly. Deselection by central Party directive is very different from withdrawal of the whip.

Manipulating the press narrative towards discussion of Conservative behaviour that is politically unattractive does not hide the continued and typically authoritarian Labour behaviour towards those it clearly regards as its 'employees' that might well be offensive in more ways than one.

Brown's Role in Failing to Ensure the Queen's Presence at D-Day Commemoration is Another Ghurka-Style Disgrace

A spokesman for the French President said:

'the Queen had been 'naturally welcome all along'. He claimed it was up to the British to say who they wanted to attend the various events, adding: 'It is not for France to designate British representation.' (Daily Mail).

Brown arranged an invitation for himself but made no arrangements for the Queen, the Commander in Chief of the United Kingdom's armed forces, to be present. The Queen is also Queen of Canada, whose forces were so prominent in the D-Day landings. While President Obama will, quite naturally, be present at ceremonies on the United States Beaches as US Commander in Chief, not to have our Commander in Chief present on the Beaches where the very last of the troops then present will parade for the last time needs a full explanation from our peculiar Prime Minister and his Downing Street staff.

And not just to us but to most of the Commonwealth as well, starting with the Canadians.

It's Not Who You Know, It's Competence and Open Negotiation

Peter Mandelson's efforts to 'act' for Vauxhall are suddenly being reported in the papers. He has had 'substantial telephone calls' with important people and made 'clear demands'. He has even 'hinted' at printing some more money to 'aid' Vauxhall despite 'Britain's' disapproval of state aid to bail out failing industrial and manufacturing sectors. There have even been meetings with 'key players'. The unelected Industry Minister clearly feels the need to have been seen putting himself about recently.

It's all displacement activity. The utter irrelevance of the UK in coping with the fall out from the collapse of General Motors is what is also clear. All of GMs operations in Europe are now under Opel. Even formal calls from member states with GM Europe plants, for European Union level involvement in negotiations are going unanswered.

So much easier to look useful and spin your line when you espouse an understanding of holding an ostensibly democratic office as knowing who to call and having the right contacts, rather than knowing what you are doing and negotiating openly and publicly under the rules for an industrial solution to an industrial problem involving hundreds of thousands of jobs and lives.

There is no Excuse for Denying a General Election Now

'Because he's going to lose' is too facile a response to why the Peculiar Unelected obstructs consultation on the Parliament with the electorate to whom they will answer eventually. (Oh yes they will; and the longer the delay the greater the peril of more violent means than votes coming into play).

There isn't a great deal more to be wrung from the current situation. The Revenue is riding after the tax dodging Members, the houses are flipped and furnished and the children needing a first independent home installed in those paid for by all of us. There has been a hiccup in installing them In Trough, but that will soon be sorted by the removal of elderly bed blockers serendipitously washed away by their long-standing guilt that makes them easy to pick off, or out [don't go there, not picking behaviour, ed.]

International grandstanding is blown [wince, ed.] after the failure of any one to listen to him after the G20 'summit'.

Vision? [not there either, really bad taste, ed.]

He has such a lovely wife? [do you want demotion to the Seraphim? ed.]

Lisbon? Outside his control. (Yes, but we know there are things outside his control - the financial system, the UK economy, half the Cabinet, the media narrative.....)

The conclusion must be that he has no intention ever of calling an election and is just stringing every one along while there is credibility for continuance in office under the 5-year Parliament acts. He reckons he'll be better dug-in, in a year's time. Got a really scary scenario going - and imagining a scenario scarier than what we are living through right now is moving into the realms of attacks from outer space.

We can hear the speech, in that ugly voice:

'The From Another Planet capitalist assault upon Labour heartlands of hardworking, acceptably structured kinship groups has been held by entrenched descendants of former mineworkers in the north east. Wales and Scotland have been abandoned to Other Planet, I mean Celtic, nationalism but will be regained once Devolutionary tendencies have been rooted-out during the next Five Year Plan period. Across the rest of the country there is hand to hand fighting in every school as 'parents' are defeated by 'carers' in the struggle for indoctrination and the next generation production statistics, over education. Around Cambridge there is physical as well as intellectual 'struggle' as 'dons' have traitorously abandoned Fabian thought and are defending research facilities and libraries against the authorities and 'entitled students with adjusted examination marks' sent to control knowledge access and burn or wipe out subversive understanding and its facilitators. London and its immediate environs is under 24 hour curfew, on pain of being shot on sight, while financial centres are secured as 'global regulation-free areas'.

Never fail to kick a Brown when he is down or we will regret it.

Time to End the United Kingdom for a United Ireland

"UDA, they called themselves the UDA. [Ulster Defence Association, whose sole purpose is to maintain violently six of the nine counties of Ulster as part of the UK. ed.] I went across to help him and they beat me while they beat him. My neighbour had to step in to save me and she was pregnant and they beat her too and she shouted ‘I’m pregnant’ and they didn’t care.”

Her husband died.

Brown Slapped Down by HM Revenue and Customs

A spokesman for HM Revenue and Customs said: “The operation of the tax system is the responsibility of HMRC and no one else. ..It is our job to ensure that the tax system operates correctly and we do this. ..We police the tax rules right across the board effectively and without exception. All self-assessment returns are subject to inquiry.”

HMRC is looking through the enormous claims of Members of Parliament to consider whether they are liable to declaration and taxation. The Commons Fees Office has no status to determine taxable, and taxable as benefits in kind, income. Neither has the 'set up a body to rule on expenses' idea of the 'set up a body appointed by me to rule on anything and everything' Prime Minister and Saviour of the World (well, his world, anyway).

The Telegraph is reporting that HM Revenue and Customs has been investigating for some time and there have been 'discreet' requirements to 'stop it, now' from the HMRC on some Members. Why discreet? They are not backward in coming forward with the rest of us.

It wouldn't be pleasant to discover that the tax authorities and HM Treasury have not been even-handed.

The Truest Blogging is the Most Feigning

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,
And do not listen to those critics ever
Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books
Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks,
As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons;
Good bloggers have a weakness for bad puns."

(Apologies to W.H. Auden)

Still Taking Our Money

How babyish to try and start a discussion on proportional representation. Anyone who wants to know about PR can put on their anorak and spend an hour with the Wikipedia entry. After that, there is nothing more to be said.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Home Secretary, the Business Secretary, the Minister for the Olympics, the Foreign Secretary, the Education Secretary for England (whatever he's calling himself these days), his wife, indeed the whole world that is the Brown Executive is variously avoiding various taxes, profiting from 'second' homes, and charging us for specialist advice on how best to do it (or perhaps that should be have it) all, signing multiple mortgage applications with eyes tight shut, and persisting in office, fruiting bodies and spores on greyish tendrils, spreading through our democratic structures, and smelling.

Presumably the Head of State isn't shutting this down because she hasn't got the power to do so after all. Imagine trying to end the Parliament and being told 'Nonsense!' After all, that's what we have been told when we tell them to go. 'Go away and talk among yourselves about proportional representation'.

Regaining Both Democratic and Cultural Control of England

Rescaling the state is an outcome of the economic and financial requirements of increasing integration of the world economy. The kind of economics practised in the post War settlement required clearly defined borders and social cohesion within which to deliver keynesian welfare style policies and wealth redistribution to poorer localities; as the settlement broke down, under changes driven by ideology and politics as well, the imperative of a defined arena, the nation state itself, began to be considered redundant.

Governance became localised, regionalised, cross border and the central state more like a federal economic and financial climate setter - that climate being global neoliberalism-favourable. What surprised observers was the reassertion of the nation state in a recast but culturally stronger form. With many formerly central governance powers devolved to the lowest effective layer of the new structures, the determining characteristics of the state became more those of culture and less those of administration and governance. With pluralist democratic choice at every level the nation state transformed itself rather than died out, identified by its Frenchness, Germanness, Italianness, even Belgianness...

Except for England. Offered democratic choice over our decentralised governmental structures, we declined any such decentralistion at all. Unable to believe their luck our then elected central government simply pretended that the refusal was an expression of lack of interest and imposed the new model without democratic control. They then unleashed the most ferocious deculturisation programme, reinforced and driven home by every means from the state broadcaster to the government appointees of the regions and the localities. Englishness became unspeakable.

And we became governed wholly by centrally appointed administrators who saw themselves as arbitrators of the good and of all political decision-taking - redistribution, education, health, investment, infrastructures ...they are right and we will agree with them even unto thought crime as a means of repressing dissidence. They would become a permanent, self renewing elite (even as we type the second wave of the first post democratic elite is emerging from its training in our tertiary education sector) and the United Kingdom would be the power base from which to access positions of power in 'global' governance.

No wonder people do not like the European Union. But there is a total misapprehension. What is wrong with England is the lack of democracy, not the unstoppable changing and evolving culturally-dominated nation state identity. We are denied what we wanted, which is to remain an independent trading country with defended borders and a small but efficient welfare and redistributive system. Other advanced capitalist countries chose this model too. But they did not have the terrible misfortune of self-opinionated, self-righteous, socialist engineering busybodies becoming the elected government at first but then installing themselves for good in what they think of as their rightful and proper place.

We need to come to terms with the nation state as it is now. There is no going back. But unless we retake democratic control over our multi-layered and currently appointed governance, unless we reassert our understanding and enjoyment of what is our culture, of who we are not as a physically defined geopolitical area but as a language, a history, a thought system, a way of being, just as Italians know they are Italian and all the other nations know and value themselves, we will lose. And we will lose to men and women like Blair, Brown, Balls, Hoon.

And all their clients and nominees.

Mr Cameron Must Commit Unequivocally to a Rejection of the Lisbon Treaty

Brownian New Labour is gagging. Gagging on its own vomit, gagging on its financial and economic incompetence, gagging for the Lisbon Treaty to be in place before our general election. And the Lisbon Treaty is Brown's saviour in his 'vision' of post-democratic progressive governance. Brown has presided over the evisceration of any parliamentary discussion and potential opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. Brown has ignored widespread doubt outside of Parliament and ratified and deposited the United Kingdom's acceptance of post-democratic progressive governance at Rome.

The 'chaos' he fears is his loss of control, office, future for his clients and himself as the United Kingdom stands with Ireland, Poland (once again), the Czech Republic (not again but the shame of our last failure might this time be expunged), and the people of Germany who have every reason to fear the goals of their government. The 'chaos' produced by the general election in our country will be the end of a federal, state capitalist, anti-democratic Europe.

Euro-fighting over Opel

It does cross the mind that the acceptance of the last tranche of Eurofighters, (late but trusty weapons in fighting the Cold War), by a Brown so notoriously mean with defence expenditures he's probably won a couple of small wars for whatever is the other side all on his own, is in the hope of tipping the German Chancellor against the FIAT deal.

If FIAT takes Opel then the essential capacity cutbacks will occur in the UK. None of the cutbacks were ever going to occur in Germany - the suggestion is just smearing and lying by the usual suspects at Brown Central. Equally, the suggestion that the UK government might put some money into any deal is not so much usual-suspect smearing and lying as usual-suspect self aggrandizement and showing off. We're bankrupt.

Germany has to decide: go with FIAT, have a pan continental European car deal that protects jobs and markets in most of Europe and opens the United States and indeed whole North American market, but shuts down car assembly for good in the UK, thus cutting Brown off at the knees and losing the Eurofighter purchase. Or go with Magna and do Brown a favour, shutting down excess capacity in Italy. But then it's much more expensive to act against Italy, because it is incoherent in terms of an EU car industry, and EU/US markets, and Italian workers are fully social-market protected.

So Mrs Merkel will have to balance aircraft workers against car workers; balance Brown's bust UK against the always competent and entrepeneurial Italy no matter what the numbers say, (and Brown's 'Britain' has only assembly plants, not a motor industry with research, design, and innovation); go for a thriving, capital and labour efficient industry against the trade union pressure to preserve all jobs, which is what Brown has got the UK Unions pressing on their German socialist brothers for; consider the slight German distress at being FIATed, and come to terms with EU rules and Ford not permitting a third (or is it fourth) way where Germany just nationalises her car company out of dying General Motors.

No wonder she keeps putting the announcement off. I wonder what offers she's wringing out of Brown in these closing hours.

It Started in the 17th Century, not in America

Mr Speaker removed for the first time in over 300 years. Members of the House of Lords suspended for the first time in over 300 years.

How long is it since we defaulted on our debt? 1693?

That would be right in our Brownian time frame.

Promoveatur ut amoveatur

Conversation at dinner this evening alighted on Mr Brown. (There was comment on the UK getting a lower credit rating than Italy). It was agreed that the only way to free us from an incompetent was to promote him to a nominally prestigious position from which, being useless in reality, he couldn't do any more damage. (This is a reliably translated version into English of the Italian definition of the latin phrase, guaranteed by Mr HG, who knows all three languages like the back of).

First up were the IMF or the World Bank presidencies. Unfortunately Brown's been informally considered and rejected for them. A post in Europe? Nope, his power base, such as it is, rests in a non euro-using member state with secessionist tendencies; and there were giggles about Brown's comportment when in Brussels (or anywhere else for that matter).

Africa was mooted but it was agreed that Africa, at least sub-Saharan Africa, which is the part intended (as North Africa has historical and post-imperialist ties that render it wholly differently oriented), could be thought of as animal, vegetable, and mineral. Unfortunately Mr Brown cannot. He hasn't the slightest acquaintance with husbandry, agriculture, or mining, metallurgy and engineering.

A general problem is that Mr Brown is a generalist. No-one could think even of any language, European or African, other than English, that he commanded. If he can't manage French and German, let alone Russian or Italian, how much more likely is it that he is poor in, for instance, Bemba? You can't do anything when you can't understand what anyone else is saying. There was a significant silence while we considered Mr Brown's listening qualities.

What, then, are Mr Brown's abilities and qualifications, the interests closest to the brownian heart? What would he claim should be considered? First, economics and finance - failure is no disqualification for passionate interest. Second, globalisation - democracy is no deterrent to world progressive governance. Third, extension - power base is no limitation to multi-jurisdictional agenda and activity. Fourth, status - he likes his Chequers and his summits, and they aren't really very expensive. No problem.

The World Trade Organisation awaits him like a blushing bride. Certainly Pascal Lamy might take a view, but he is in his second term and should never have been in his first but that the Europeans were doing a spot of promo/amo themselves. Not only does the position fit Mr Brown like a glove, being M. Lamy does too. Well, he could lose a bit of weight.

Tomorrow we will consider what will move Pascal out of Gordon's way. This evening the unanimous view was that Gordon himself is probably the best bet.

Constitutional Rules are Just as Flexible as the Rest of our Constitution Prime Minister. You Have No Unique Power to decide on a General Election

The fragile stability of the currency and of our entire financial and economic status vis a vis the rest of the world was balanced on the expectation that there is a general election imminent and that a a stable government of recognised financial and economic competence and probity would be returned, ready to cope with the Brownian disaster. And deal with it in a stable institutional and political environment.

Incredibly Brown has wrecked that market understanding as well. With his outlandish remarks in the Commons on Wednesday he has asserted the thesis that he and he alone can call an election and that as he and he alone can save the world, or at the very least the Uniited Kingom, he will not be calliing an election. He even had the misfortune to acknowledge that another pressing reason not to call an election is that he would lose it, as the markets had surmised and taken into account.

So, after being taught he cannot regulate afinancial system, after being taught he cannot guide an economy or even produce a benign climate in which a capitalist and entrepreneurial economy can thrive, he is about to receive a constitutional lesson in flexibility's response to intransigence and misunderstanding of the nature of rules.

Maintenance and Scrounging

The floating refuge - the island where ducks could quack defiance at Mr Fox; the garden so lovely and so loved, perhaps in the Yellow Book, it seemed a proper recipient of our money; the moat - if you have a moat it has to be kept, stocked with pike perhaps. All these are part of maintaining a house if you get landed with that kind of house. And get landed with is more usually the way you do get such buildings and their environs. Your world turns upside down so that the place becomes a reason to work, not a provider of shelter and income. Here it's possible sometimes to set the cost of maintenance/renovation against tax under a provision designed to encourage the preservation of the landscape and its buildings.


These claims have often been quite low, well under possible claims; in the moat affair the moat was merely part of an over all house maintenance bill which the owner felt was so enormous it should not possibly be charged and the officers suggested a tiny percentage of the annual costs payment, so they received copies of all maintenance expenditures among which was the moat.

It's the plasma tellies, the sofa beds, the champagne glasses, the kitchen 'units', the floozie with the jacuzzi, the 'doing it up and selling it on and keeping the capital gain without tax by flipping' that offends Angels.

I don't mind the ducks, the garden, the moat, at all. And I do mind that the scroungers will continue to sit as our representatives while the people maintaining lovely things, that benefit us all, have smiled and left us to it.

Gordon Brown and his Mummy and Daddy

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom:

“I am angry and I am appalled. If my father, my parents, thought that these things were going on in the House of Commons, they would be utterly appalled,”

Gordon Brown was born in 1951. He is nearly sixty years old. There is clearly a great deal the matter with him.

Fewer Scottish Seats in the Westminster Parliament

There are nearly sixty Westminster Members of Parliament sitting for Scottish seats. Far too many when so much decision-taking has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Almost every aspect of every day life in Scotland, where there is any government intervention, is a matter for their own Government and their own Parliament. The intervention of those sitting for Scottish seats in matters that refer only to England, or to England and Wales, is wrong.

Wrong for two reasons: the obvious irrelevance of Scottish opinion on everyday English affairs, and the importation into English politics of a most distinctive and frankly unpleasant kind of Scottish Labour political behaviour.

The Devil makes work for idle hands, and since Scotland has a Scottish National Party government, these Scottish Labour MPs can enjoy the fruits of being in power only in England. Removing the member for Glasgow East (Labour to the bitter end despite the requirement that the Speaker should be above Party) from a position of power in Parliament in London must be followed by a drastic reduction in the numbers of Scottish seats and a prohibition on their taking part, let alone voting, in purely English affairs.

Flipping and Separating and $600,000

David Mills, lawyer - scion of a Labour 'family', married to New Labour Minister Tessa Jowell - Mills was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for perjury and false witness by the Milan Court. He had lied under oath and for payment of some $600,000 to allow Silvio Berlusconi to escape the criminal and civil consequences of tax evasion.

Today the judgment was published in full. Mr Berlusconi is now Prime Minister of Italy but, rather as Mr Speaker Martin has been abandoned by those he thought were his friends and would defend him in his dubious defences of their acts, Mr Berlusconi did not include David Mills in the law that he had passed to protect high officeholders in the Ialian government and state from prosecution while in office.

The $600,000's appearance in Mr Mills' bank account in England coincided with the remortgages of the Mills/Jowell London house when Tessa Jowell was in the Cabinet. She signed two applications to remortgage the Kentish town property, as co-owner, but later denied that she understood what she was doing. The Mills/Jowell union was declared to have broken down and the couple separated. This 'separation' enabled Tessa Jowell to remain in office at a time when it was inconvenient for New Labour to lose yet another minister for housing and mortgage shenanigans.

Perhaps the Daily Telegraph will be able to tell us whether the Kentish town house was declared as first or second home by Ms Jowell, and whether its designation has been flipped. The Kentish town house was sold shortly after the separation of the couple was announced.

Mr Mills is appealing his conviction. Italians are calling for an explanation from their Prime Minister over the judgment's revelations.

Parliamentary Report

Achieving Post Democratic Progressive Governance in the United Kingdom has required that governance decisions are proposed and effected in a Post Democratic Progressive institution. This has occurred and is now in effective operation. Constitutional confirmation of the New status quo for the United Kingdom has been deposited by the UK Regional Executive with the Authorities at Rome.



Residual resistance by institutions that formerly embodied constitutional arrangements within the region of the United Kingdom, under elected democracy within the 'nation state', has been contained and placed outside of Post Democratic Progressive Governance by the persistent emptying of the 'Parliament' both of authority, and by means of maintaining it closed and empty for much of the time.



Plans to reopen the building after a suitable interval of superficial use, including outreach educational projects on political systems of the past, are now implemented during school term time.


NOTE for Visitors and Guided Tours:

Attempts by actors in the 'Parliament' to revive its former pre Post-Democratic Progressive Government functions recently have been sufficiently troublesome to require its closure until further notice from 6pm on Thursday 21 May 2009. It is hoped to reopen the 'House' from 2.30pm on Monday 1 June but Organisers of parties should seek confirmation before finalising their trip.

FIRE HAZARD WARNING:
Should these 'demonstrations' continue the dangers of fire breaking out in a building with extensive historical fixtures and fittings endangers the survival of a major part of our past.

The House of Commons Must Rid Itself of a Pernicious and Partisan Speaker

How can it possibly be the role of the Executive to decide on whether a vote should be held on removing the Speaker of the House? Quintessentially that decision must belong to the House. The Speaker has got it wrong. Again.

Out With the Partisan Speaker and Then Out With the Unelected Prime Minister

The information upon which the Telegraph has drawn in these last days of Parliament's shame is still out there. Not just the highlighted data attached to newsworthy individuals but the complete information, the repeated, petty, abusive acts, the data that will blow New Labour to pieces. The Telegraph is not the only source for this exhaustive account of the purchase of political acquiescence. It exists elsewhere and outlets are being sought to put it, freely available, on the internet. And the reason why Labour is much more damaged by it all is that Opposition members of Parliament did not need to be disciplined in the ways that New Labour needed to discipline the Parliamentary Labour Party, whose allegiances had so forcibly been shifted from their Leader and Prime Minister Blair to his unelected political assassin Brown. While the Conservatives had suffered a popular and charismatic Leader's dispatch, at least they fought out the aftermath by vote and democratic choice within their Party. And most of that was carried out in opposition.

What we are looking at is the half submerged disciplinary system that delivers the New Labour majority to a usurper. A usurper who for more than a decade wrecked his Party Leader's agenda, including denying the proper financing of two wars. Many soldiers, caught in a political conflict beyond their world, died from that denial of financing, or its diversion to politically more rewarding defence procurement, in the interests of Brown's self advancement. And as Brown constructed his client state with means tests and high taxation, with wages reduced to below minimum consumption levels by taxation, with the destruction of systems of social cohesion by encouraging atomistic relationships with his authoritarian control, but not with other people, with family, with neighbours, unease among our Labour representatives was bought off and then blackmailed into silence.

Many commenters have recognised 'realised socialism' as it has spored, like dry rot, through our social and political world. Now, as one of Brown's chief assistants, a man bred like him in Scottish socialist politics with all that is implied in such a description, proudly disgracing his office as Speaker of our Legislature, stands exposed for the corrupted, partisan bully that has played a large part in maintaining this decade-long farrago of false democracy, we are supposed to take him for a scapegoat.

Speaker Martin has controlled the business of the Commons to the advantage of Brown since he was levered into the office he disgraces by Scottish socialist bullies nine years ago. And to rid our Parliament of him is the first step in ridding ourselves of our undemocratic, authoritarian rule.

Shame of Scotland and its Years Knuckling Under to Scottish Labour

The Scottish Labour Party was on full view this afternoon. Is that the system in which the country's Prime Minister was nurtured? Are these the kind of people with whom he interacted as a young politician? Are we to believe that all he validated his claims to office with is at this level of vicious, bullying aggression and professional and technical incompetence?

Dangerous Times for Our Democracy

A no confidence motion in Brown's regime, conducted under Brown's placeman Speaker Martin is going to be much harder to win than a no confidence motion when Martin has been forced to resign and a decent and proper Speaker runs the Commons. What is more a debate and vote, whatever it is called formally, on Speaker Martin remaining in place, even if lost will of itself weaken Martin beyond recovery.

So any vote whatever on this Speaker will be resisted ad oltranza - for beyond that bitter end lies Brown's immediate demise. Everything that must be done to remove Brown, by his Party or by the Opposition or by both, which includes pulling down Speaker Martin, must be done at once - within hours, at most days. Time is running out for our known political world.

English Protestants Have the Best Tunes

"However there is nothing to suggest he will stand up this afternoon and say he is resigning....The Liberal Democrats are playing a stupid House of Commons game. If they force him out, Labour will vote for another Labour Speaker. They have been warned.", said a 'friend'!? of Speaker Martin.

Another Labour Speaker? We see. Speaker Boothroyd was elected as a Labour representative to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for West Bromwich, but on being honoured with the ancient office of Speaker earned the heartfelt and unstinting praise of all parties in the House. She stood for us all, whatever our political allegiance, in the scrutiny of the exercise of power. No 'Labour Speaker' she. Speaker Martin is condemned in all his stupidity and disloyalty to office from the mouths of his 'friends'. No wonder Roman Catholics still have such a bad time of it in England, even after centuries have passed. Speaker Martin is not a true representative of parliamentary freedom and assertion of the people's wielding of power. Some of us are not snivelling anti-Parliamentarians, Roman interlopers, Labour satraps. We have been misrepresented doubly by this man.

We will stand shoulder to shoulder with English freedoms, and not least because you lot have easily the best hymns.

The Polls Are Not So Bad That Labour Cannot Be Required To Face An Election Now

The Queen, it might be imagined quite reasonably asked the Prime Minister last Tuesday why the Parliament should not be dissolved forthwith, before matters got any worse - which they have. Equally it is possible to imagine his response. A response that would be a mixture of attempted bullying and servility. The servility first, if he had his temper under the control of his medication.

Global scale events that started elsewhere (surely even Brown has stopped insulting America?) have brought down the best laid plans of mice etc. (What is it with Scottish people and mice? Or Spaniards and bulls, the French and...but I digress). To go to the country now would yield unlevel playing fields, Etonian or otherwise, disadvantage the interests of hardworking families, a longer perspective while policies I have initiated internationally are given the time to work through... speaking as Saviour of the World I can assure you Madam Chairperson, I mean Ma'am, that hanging on is in my best interests and those of my supporters.

And who are your supporters, Prime Minister? Ah, well thereby hangs a tail (oh no, mice again) I mean tale.

We are committed to Progressive Politics, Ma'am, post democratic and modern. Our fellow Progressives both at home and in the United Kingdom, believe in global solutions to global problems that started somewhere else. And it is not fair, not fair to us and to hard working families everywhere, to ask us to produce a democratic mandate in a post democratic Progressive environment when we are not going to win in a month of Sundays (on which we shouldn't vote anyway, even though most are free on Sundays and might nip in on the way to the pub - son of the manse, Ma'am fully kitted out with oath to hypocrisy and moral compass). Anyway, apart from all that, Ma'aaaam, Watch It. The election is mine to call when I choose, and yours to concede the minute I say so. And next time I'd better be given a chair, I'll not stand here like a numpty you....(notices has been empty roomed, picks up ground-in Nokia from underfoot).

Damaging Future Hopes for Economic Repair

This constitutional and political crisis, wilfully unresolved by the refusal to call a general election, is bound to have economic consequences just as our financial system and our economy are in desperate difficulties because of Gordon Brown's decade at the Treasury. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

'So far, the markets have proved remarkably sanguine over the spiraling U.K. national debt, and the Labour government's refusal to tackle it. Neither sterling nor the bond markets have collapsed despite plans for unprecedented government-bond issuance for years to come. That is because the markets are betting that Gordon Brown's battered government will lose the election due by June 1, 2010, and will be replaced by a more fiscally responsible Conservative government.'

But if the steady drift to minor parties, resulting from the collapse of confidence in the institutions of the state itself, and in the longstanding political system, is not halted by the ejection of politicians widely regarded as corrupt by the electorate (as is shown in recent polls), then the markets may become less convinced that the kinds of tax rises and expenditure cuts required to begin undoing Brown's destructive policies will be forthcoming.

And Read the Mail Too

The Telegraph reports:

'Parliamentary authorities, overseen by Michael Martin, the Speaker, gave secret permission for some MPs to over-claim for thousands of pounds in home loan interest in deals that led to the systematic abuse of the taxpayer-funded expenses system.

Ben Chapman, a Labour MP, admitted last night that he was allowed to continue claiming for interest payments on his entire mortgage after repaying £295,000 of the loan in 2002. Over 10 months the arrangement allowed Mr Chapman to receive £15,000 for the part of the home loan which had been paid off. Last night, he said he would not give back the money.

Permission to claim “phantom” mortgage payments is understood to have been offered to several MPs before 2004.

The Labour MP for Wirral South, who has been a ministerial aide, approached the fees office at the end of 2002 to explain that he was repaying £295,939 of the mortgage on his designated second home in Lambeth, south-east London. This reduced the interest payments – met by the taxpayer – from £1,900 to £400 per month.

“By paying off capital I am forgoing interest and investment opportunities elsewhere,” he told the fees office. He and an official “thus agreed that the mortgage should remain for ACA (Additional Costs Allowance) purposes at the original amount”.'

There is a Madame Defarge-style commenter, Sean T., on Political Betting who Angels will now emulate.

Knits.

Never Forgive Them

The range of gifts awarded to themselves by Members of Parliament is as if they were getting marrried, not going to work. Beds, mattresses, linen, kitchen equipment, sofas, home entertainment systems, glasses, china, knives and forks, carpets, lamps, washing machines, dryers...

My children, and yours, as they set up their grown up lives, are forced to contribute to this.

We Have Been Here Before. What is Unusual is Denying a General Election

“Westminster is now engulfed by a political crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen for generations. We need to now do something different, radically different, and I just don’t think defenders of the status quo are the right kind of people to do that.” Nick Clegg.

No, we just need to vote in a general election. Radical in its effect? Yes. Different? No. Absolutely normal when there is need to ask for a democratic mandate.

Exclude Uddin From Parliament Today

Speed is more important than proving strict liability in politics. Politics is not law, it is choice. When we hear that a woman who claims personal friendship with Cherie Blair and through that connexion has been elevated to the House of Lords, the revising chamber of our Legislature, that this woman is living with her immediate family, some of them in separate accommodation in the same block, in social housing in Spitalfields while owning a two bedroom flat in Kent and a mansion in Bangladesh, speed is what we want.

Letters of enquiry sent dilatorily by those with powers to end this public affront, this insult to all of us who contribute taxes willingly for social housing for the needy, may be designed to meet legal requirements. This means simply, that legal action does not begin to cover the situation.

Political action can be taken at once by suspending membership of the Lords. And not next month. Monday morning. With pictures.

Get Out of Our Way, We want to Vote

"The bottom line is that any MP who is found to have defied the rules will not be serving in my government,” Mr Brown said. But members of Parliament are not elected to serve in 'his' government. They are elected to serve us. The government is our government and is failing so badly because of its partisanship, narrow, undemocratic base, and false take on its purpose, and on its relationship with the electorate.

If Brown would get out of the way we can deal with our representatives ourselves.

“I want to assure every citizen of my commitment to a complete clean-up of the system — that wherever and whenever immediate disciplinary action is required I will take it.”

His 'assurances' aren't worth the breath he draws to issue them. The Prime Minister is a notorious liar. He lies by commission, by ommission, by nature. He lies, 'knowing he is lying' as they say. We do not care for his 'commitment'. Nor need he trouble himself with cornering all disciplinary action that is to be taken. Vengeance is ours, not his. Despite his monstrosity of an ego, he is not the Lord. When it comes to holding our representatives in Parliament to account, we, the people, are the Lord.

No!

In the Galleria degli Specchi of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi they are playing Lully tonight.

They're going to do it. They're going to have the Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs, in all that glittering magnificence. I understand the Director has given way and will be giving time with a Tous les Matins du Monde staff walloping the floor.

Angels have their invitation but the plumber called this morning to install the automatic watering at the eco house. We will go for the watering, and look again at Youtube - but should you be in Florence, there are a couple of places...


UPDATE: FIGHTING IN THE VIA CAVOUR

Getting there early should have been mentioned. The world and his wife sauntered down the via Martelli and found they had a problem. Our musician, resplendent in bouffant black silk, and gold, and ancient Sicilian pearls round neck and woven into hair, descended to admit a guest and only the mob were able to impose readmittance. 'I'm playing' met with doubt from the guards and roars of laughter from the crowd. 'Even we don't normally dress so beautifully, IN,' they cried and musician and guest swept upstairs.

Adjacent rooms were opened and still the audience clamoured for entry. No Florentine would sit on the floor so it was possible to get a lot of leaning elegance into the space available. The seated unwise enough to exit for an ice cream in the via Ricasoli during the interval stood for the second half. Intervention by the musicians early let in their smallest pupils, front row, eyes wide with wonder, not least because en route their parents were left to their own devices. The temperature was at boiling point and the atmosphere a perfect recreation of Lully's world.

And the Turks? They had to play it over and over again.

Brown Commands a Troughing Rabble in the House, Not a Majority

Fear that New Labour's regime would attempt to prolong the life of this Parliament beyond the usual five year maximum term is allayed now. The behaviour of its Speaker in co-ordinating the prevention of enquiry into abuse of expenses, (and concern over how expenses abuse was part of the Labour party's disipline system with whips encouraging the claiming of all possible expenses, needed for the discharge of parliamentary duties or not, with any excess to be handed over to the Party), has ended any argument that this Parliament, with this membership, can continue.

No matter what further disaster engulfs the United Kingdom, its financial system collapsed, its real economy collapsing, millions out of work, at war in hopeless circumstances, its living standards degraded, the individual members of this Parliament have individually disgraced themselves. And the preferred New Labour Project governance - their Country of the Nations and the Regions, integrated into a federated European Union governance, is not in place. The regions have no elected assemblies, the nations have used devolution to assert independence aims and remove New Labour from power within their borders.

This Parliament must be replaced as quickly as possible because its individual members are no longer acceptable representatives, not because the governing party has lost its majority, which is the more usual reason for dissolution and a general election. But in the long history of our democracy even this kind of dissolution, for widespread and individualised corruption, has precedents. The most famous being after Cromwell's outburst, but occurring too throughout the 19th century.

So our Parliament must be renewed under our own familiar system and practices. These are not of themselves defective. Like the rules governing the claiming of expenses, they are more like guidelines and highly flexible. It could be argued these flexible organic systems are the best of systems. If all of those using our democratic parliamentary system - electors and elected - can live up to its demands for probity and service to its goals, it is indeed the best of systems. New Labour's goals were to replace it, openly at first; but when their plans were rejected at the first democratic test, when elected regional assemblies were rejected, they sought to replace it by stealth and then by force, and by corruption.

There is no point in holding out any longer, nothing further can be done, no policies introduced, no discourse between the people and their elected government undertaken to choose the best course to deal with our dreadful difficulties. Not until these venal men and women have been removed from their places and we vote in those who are committed to honourable public service under our conventions and our democracy.

The convention, under our rules, is that the monarch agrees to a dissolution, and dissolves the parliament. As we are suffering a massive abuse of the system by all parts of both Houses, but particularly the Lower House, led by its Speaker, the Head of State is going to have to be flexible within convention. She can do convention beautifully, so next time she sees her Prime Minister, who commands not so much a majority in the Lower House as an immoral unrepresentative rabble, it might be best to give him a dissolution whether he actually says the words or not. And say he did.

Criminality and Retrospection

'Whatever the public anger and outrage, we must be clear that only conduct that was an offence at the time should be the subject of criminal penalties. That is an obvious statement of an ancient and fundamental liberty which applies to all.' writes the Times on whether there are criminal liabilities amongst the moral degredation we are staring at.

Well, no actually. We have been forced to accept retrospective tax liabilities and are threatened with more legislation that has retrospective effect. New Labour has wiped out more ancient and fundamental liberties which apply to all, including no retrospective liability,than they have had hot dinners (at our expense).

Inequality Delivered by the Labour Party

Job-seeker's allowance is just under £60 a week. If you are married and registered unemployed that's your lot for you and your family. Lots of means-tested benefits will be denied you if you have any savings at all.

You and I have been paying Mr and Mrs Balls £100 a week and more just for their food bills. For years and years. And they are fully employed, by us.

Czech President to Chair EU-China and EU-Russia Summits

President Vaclav Klaus has traded off chairing the European Union summit in June where various measures that might encourage Ireland's people to vote for the Lisbon EU Constitutional Treaty are to be signed off, in favour of chairing the EU-Russia and EU-China summits.

A series of Lisbon Treaty guarantees on tax, neutrality and ethical issues is part of a political package for Ireland. So afraid were Lisbon Treaty supporters of what Professor Klaus might do to the credibility of these guarantees there had been pressure to delay this particular summit to July when Sweden would be providing the EU President. President Klaus' office stated:

"The President proposed that Prime Minister Jan Fischer should chair June's EU summit [on the Lisbon Treaty, ed.] in Brussels on behalf of the Czech presidency... The President has full trust in the Prime Minister and has no doubt that he will handle this role easily and with success."

So we can take it that the Temptation of the Irish is now fully choreographed and ready for offer, while the summits on the European Union's relations with Russia, and with China need serious oversight from an honest broker.

Dry Rotteness

How much does rectifying dry rot cost? A few commenters have remarked that £22,000 seems a lot of money for dealing with dry rot in a relatively small house in Southampton. Anyone who has had to eradicate dry rot does not forget, it is the most damaging result of lack of maintenance for a building. But to have £22,000 of damage eradication and reinstatement of plaster and woodwork would imply a devastating infestation - widespread, and of long standing, and in a large house with high quality wood and plaster work.

What is this house in Southampton that we have paid so much to free of dry rot? A mansion? And for how long was the Member of Parliament who charged us this sum failing to maintain it properly so that we were exposed to the cost of such extensive damage?

Striking Down Corruption and the Attorney General

Lord Irvine, the former Lord Chancellor, and Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former director-general of MI5, have spent the past few months investigating the Lords Taylor of Blackburn (dyed in the wool mate of Jack Straw), and Truscott (Labour minister and appointed to the Lords when he lost the last European elections).

Unsurprisingly, this has led to their downfall. Angels would not like to face Lord Irvine in investigatory mode but, most particularly, not Baroness Manningham-Buller in any mode at all unless that of being on the receiving end of an offer of a small dry sherry from the College Principal, and even then entertained with other students.

In a striking rebuff to the Attorney General (en passant, you understand, a casual blow to an over-promoted, unelected politician, and appropriately categorised lawyer) they decided they did have the power to suspend the pair until the end of the current session of Parliament, relying on laws dating back more than 300 years. The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, (what is it with Scotland? Why don't they go away) earlier advised the committee that it did not have such powers. (For people like her the world began in 1955, at birth).

In a particularly delicious felicity of phrase (gold star to whoever drafted the decision) Lord Taylor is described as having an "advanced degree of self satisfaction".

For Those in Peril on the Sea but for Those At Home Too

Silvio Berlusconi was not Angels' choice for Prime Minister of Italy. But he was for most Italians - indeed he has enormous support, from the mid-fifties percent acknowledged by La Repubblica (the Guardian of the Italian press) to the over seventy percent claimed by Berlusconi himself. Wherever the figure lies, Mr Berlusconi has an absolute and undisputed majority.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, the Italian administration at every level is efficient, and works more rather than less according to the rules, with power devolved to lowest effective levels and a high rate of participation in voting and political debate. So what the Italians have just decided to do about immigration is certainly theirs to own, and ours to consider very carefully, because it impacts on the whole continent and confronts issues that are deeply divisive in the United Kingdom.

Italy has decided it does not accept multiculturalism; settle in Italy and embrace their language, freedoms, restrictions, values, laws, practices, or don't come. Italian culture is not unaware and most certainly not cold or unkind, but it is grounded in the belief that it is the most beautiful, the most vivid, the most important and the best. Oh yes, notions of best, and of better and worst, and abject failure, are ingrained. In the last week the national legislature has been acting, with enormous majorities, to assert this. Every attempt by international bodies, the United Nations, the European Union to stop them has been met with most willing negotiations and conciliation, the setting up of whatever safeguards have been demanded for human rights, but they are immovable.

The boatloads of people being trafficked across the Mediterranean by criminal organisations (and do the Italians understand criminal organisations!) are being met in international waters and escorted back to their points of sail on the north African coast. Night after night there are pictures of the appalling condition, both of the sea and the boats the migrants are embarked in, as they are stopped, often hauled out of the water slopping over their vessels, and returned to a place of at least physical safety. For those who claim political asylum a centre for processing claims has been provided under the guidance and control of the United Nations. For the economic migrants, those collected together from an enormous area and packaged for onward transit by the people traffickers, there is application to enter Italy by legal channels. Hundreds and hundreds have drowned in recent years so at least that has been ended, as it had to be. As the Prime Minister said, no-one must be left to die in the sea as have so many we did not reach in time. But rescue cannot confer access. The traffickers must be stopped.

That is the first set of arrangements voted into place. Those voted for inside Italy are severe. Anyone without temporary or permanent resident's status will now find it very difficult to access work, lodgings, health care, schooling, or any welfare service. Both the non-resident and the provider of any of these factors will be liable to fines and/or imprisonment, followed by removal for the non-resident. Right of abode will not be extended automatically to spouses or other family members. To remain requires demonstrating an ability to support oneself by legal and sufficiently remunerated employment. The requirements go on and on.

We sat in front of the television yesterday evening gobsmacked as the deputies were shown giving their votes one by one in overwhelming numbers. The Left coalition broke as the votes were called out and the names appeared on the screen above the Speaker's chair.

What this means for other member-states of the EU is so far-reaching it is hard to think it all through. What is certain is that the people traffickers will not cease their activities; the demand is too great and the profits too high and important for the global grey and black economy. But as each member-state closes its borders and denies internal acceptance of migrant labour and its dependants, other states that do not will be targetted. Few cultures assert their predominance as do the Italians, by English current standards every Italian would be in prison for thought crime. But some stances of multiculturalism are going to give.

Angels first reactions are that these are half measures. This is the implementation of one side of a policy. Our countries have plundered half the world for our living standards, and our value systems depend on not seeing what we have done. These acts should be accompanied by enormous expenditure in making good the lives of those who cannot do it alone. Another is that all the false piety of human rights can be met without even touching the real injustice of economic intransigence on the part of some of us. All these human righters had better get out there facing down the rich, not facing down their unease by unleashing the poorest against the poor. Another immediate thought was the speed, the determination, the unity of will displayed by Italians who have had enough watching the assaults on their world by exploiters of the wretched of the Earth. They have defended what they can, locally. They have resisted the Northern Leagues (Italy's BNP) outrageous demands, they have ignored their own bishops calls for the wishy washy worthlessness of attitude but no action embodied in our current response to the crunching movement of cultural tectonic plates. Once they set aside their elaborate exoskeleton of courtesy, Italians speak senza peli sulla lingua - bare-tongued and, to the great credit of their democratic system and to their willingness to listen, any one of them can appeal to the Tribunal on the propriety and lawfulness of any of this, and will be heard.

It all gives new meaning to:

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease
And give, for wild confusion, peace
Oh hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.

Failing to Speak for Us All

Speaker Martin's unforgivable partisanship, his determined support of the Labour party and of the Labour Executive, is as much part of our democratic crisis as the unacceptable use of expenses as untaxed wages.

He should have called the Leaders of the various parties in the House together, as any previous post-War Speaker would have done, and put in place an expenses system to meet standards of normal and decent behaviour in claiming for the costs of coming up to London for MPs from the provinces. He did not because the allowances system is an integral part of the carrot and stick control over, particularly, Labour backbenchers. He did not because he regarded, by his own words, any claimable expense for himself as 'what I am owed'. He did not because he takes his line, his orders even, from the current prime minister, as we can see from Brown's peculiar belief that he could issue unilateral orders on how expenses are to be claimed from now on, his impertinent 'apology' for the behaviour of others in the House for whom he could not possibly speak, and his gross rudeness when it was driven home to him finally that he had to act together with the leaders of the other parties and with individual backbenchers.

Speaker Martin is the embodiment of a blighted understanding of our political system. The purpose of the Legislature is to represent the interest of us all in the use of power. Power that each of us concedes for action for the general good not for the creation of an overbearing state redistributing our wealth and interfering in our private lives.

Only the Commons Regulates the Commons

'Gordon Brown went on television late last night to promise that all expenses claims by MPs of all political parties would be scrutinised, going back four years, and a mechanism set up for them to repay misclaimed cash. The controversial practice of "flipping" which house is designated as a second home, so that money could be spent on more than one property, would also be banned, he said.' (Times)

Angels has always held the opinion that Brown is stupid. What deficiency makes him believe, and express the belief publicly at least twice, that he can answer for the House? He can answer for his vile Party, and he most certainly should; he can answer for his lies, his cowardice, his failures, his arrogance, his vindictiveness, his authoritarianism, his bullying, his nose-picking and eating. But he cannot answer for the Commons.

And as for Brown's promises and even worse, his vows - beggars could ride.

No Confidence is What We Feel But Motions Like This Cannot Reassure

“That this House has no confidence in Mr Speaker and calls for him to step down; notes that Mr Speaker has failed to provide leadership in matters relating to hon. Members’ expenses; believes that a new Speaker urgently needs to be elected by secret ballot, free from manipulation by party Whips, under Standing Order No. 1B; and believes that a new Speaker should proceed to reform the House in such a way as to make it an effective legislature once again.”

Reading that it seems to be too much in one bite. It is without precedent for the Speaker to face a vote of no confidence. Votes of no confidence are directed at the administration, the Executive, not at the House, as embodied in the Speaker, itself. Votes of no confidence are moved by Opposition Leaders, not backbenchers, for obvious reasons. Secret ballots are not parliamentary practice in the United Kingdom. Reforming the Legislature to make it effective once again flies in the face of every activity of the New Labour Executive since it took office; the downgrading of legislative and judicial controls on the Executive has been the primary aim of a regime that is determined to hold permanent office by defining any opposition as either within its compass, or outside political norms and even law.

Nevertheless, the disarray of our political institutions, and the rolling boil of corruption that has overwhelmed their proper functioning cannot continue. So the Motion is also too little. Who should act? It's time the Head of State broadcast some response to, and reassurance over, the state of our governance.

Words and Imagery

You could claim for emptying the septic tank. After all, it sometimes serves a common purpose. You might claim for cleaning a domestic peripheral soak-away (if you planted a few reed beds and threw in a bit of gravel) which would count as a green common purpose. Clearing a ditch, or generic earthworks in the garden might squeeze past hard scrutiny.

But to claim for cleaning a moat!

A Crisis of English Democracy

A perfect storm has enveloped the illicit post 2007 Government. The financial system crashed. The economy is crashing. The Upper House of Parliament is mired in the sale of seats for Labour Party funding and political access to decision-takers. The Lower House is covered in ordure as its Speaker is revealed for what he is - defender of 'trade union' rights to take what Members are 'owed'. Many Members, particularly Labour Members, have accepted that view of their role. The Head of State is taking centrally important political decisions without reference to the democratic mandate - for not doing carries consequences equal to doing. The Judiciary is in complete disarray, its membership marred by selection priorities that militate against intelligence and disinterested application of our laws.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the pair of them like some Scottish Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee, the Prime Minister and the Speaker in unspeakable embrace, despoil England's democracy, claiming constitutional 'rules' that permit only death or resignation to remove them.

Real Time and Real Kinship

Miriam Patel faces being sent to prison for giving her mother's address when applying for a school place for her son. From her surname it is possible to imagine that her notions of family, kinship, residence might not fit the nuclear family definitions used by her local authority persecutors.

In any case, if she ends up doing time her son will live with his maternal grandmother anyway, or any of his aunties who doubtless live nearby.

Vulgarity of Mind That Defiles The Idea Of Trade Unionism

Death or dissolution will remove a Speaker from office. The only other means is resignation and, in Speaker Martin's case, that's as likely as Gordon Brown going to the Palace. The two are joined at the hip in their determination to downgrade and denigrate the Legislature and its restraints on the Executive.

Particularly galling is Speaker Martin's vulgar take on what is a trade unionist. There is another, decent and human world and tradition where trade unionism is a co-operative and representative institution, the organised, widely supported voice of labour, listened to with respect for its contribution to production and our economic well being by entrepreneurs and by capital. In this world such categories are peopled by workers who invest and invent and organise; and by entrepreneurs who work at all levels of an enterprise and invest, and by investors whose profit-seeking embraces such general goods as social well-being.

In Speaker Martin we have a throwback dressed in gold braid who bedizens his greed and partisanship in the trumpery of class war and entitlement.

A Clear Constitution, A Constitutional Court and a General Election, Now

Failing to ask for a dissolution of Parliament in 2007 has implications for the powers in the hands of the Head of State. Like the rest of our Constitution those powers are remarkably ill-defined formally yet most believe they are understood clearly. But in truth the contention that ' the Constitution is what we do' could not have greater support than the equally important decision by the Queen not to dissolve anyway the Parliament that had been installed in 2005.

When we vote, we vote for our local representative, and we vote on a Party manifesto. We vote too beyond our local representation, with the choice of who will implement our preferred manifesto in the forefront of our minds. While the choice of Leader is not ours unless we are party activists, conferring the office of prime minister is ours. And it's no good pretending that ours is not a 'prime minister as president' system; it is. Only an utterly inappropriate candidature in our own constituency would put voting for the individual member rather than Leader, Manifesto and Party in any other order. (Agreed, after the last few weeks of staring at the open sewer that is pouring through Westminster the individual candidate's ranking might move forward though).

So the decision not to mark the end of Blair's premiership by making 2007 the full term of the 2005 Parliament - even though Leader, Manifesto (for a new vision, everything changed, was to be set out), and Party (in that the party had not been consulted), were altered, was of the highest political order. Yet the monarch did not take the only decision that could return to us the power we had conceded to our now defunct government and would lead to a consultation with the whole country.

Whatever advice was taken, whatever precedents were cited for a change of administration in previous Parliaments, the unprecedented combination of profound change in leadership, manifesto commitments and lack of party democratic selection should have warned her that this Parliament was over. And just as importantly, political decisions of this order have long been considered a power of the people, not of the hereditary head of state. Indeed, it is a crucial part of our ill-defined constitutional settlement

Two fundamental shifts occurred: we have now a regime that is 'within the rules' but outwith the political, democratic reality. And we have a a head of state with real powers and no real constitutional controls.

All Brown Has Are Force and Lies

When Blair was driven out of office by the Brownite faction in the Labour party two things did not happen: there was no election within the Party to choose its new Leader, and there was no general election in the country to confirm the electorate's acceptance of the power shift and abandonment of the 2005 electoral Manifesto.

To achieve the premiership Brown had to do three things. First ram through his narrative that it had always been 'agreed' that Blair would 'step down' while Labour was in power so that Brown could take over, as a settlement of who should have the leadership in succession to John Smith. Apart from being a democratic outrage that two people could pre-empt choices properly for the whole Party and could openly express confidence that they would and could do so, it is known that Brown was trailing last in the Party's potential-Leader stakes. The narrative was as untrue as it was democratically offensive. But at the time it seemed a sop to ease his fury at being thwarted by his own unpopularity rather than a lie big enough to help carry him over major democratic objections

Secondly, force the Party to accept his Leadership without a Party election, which he was uncertain of winning. This was achieved by preventing the mechanisms of the Party election system from functioning. No-one was to be permitted enough nominations within the Parliamentary Labour Party for the election to take place, and enough were to nominate Brown to make any further involvement of the wider Party spurious. Looking now at these last weeks' display of cupidity and wrongdoing it is not hard to imagine Brown's bully boys moving through the PLP ranks collecting the required signatures and warning to with hold any signatures for another candidate.

Thirdly, Brown had to undermine a central manifesto undertaking that Blair would serve a full term; this was intertwined with another central plank of the Labour manifesto that there would be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. 'Full term' could mean either the maximum five years that the Parliament runs, or that the Parliament would be dissolved and a general election held immediately after Brown took over; it could not reasonably be taken to mean the assumption of Blair's majority with, at the same time, Brown's boasted political programme of 'change', of a complete break with the Blair years. Blair's majority in 2005 was much reduced from 2002, and rested on the clear commitment to the referendum on any European Union constitutional measure that replaced the voted-down European Constitutional Treaty. It is untrue that there was a clear understanding in 2005 that those who voted for Blair would get Brown. How could there be? No such arrangement was democratically deliverable, though to some tribalist Labour party loyalists sunk in their narrow, real politik viewpoint that could be brushed aside.

The Head of State is familiar with real politik; pragmatism is the monarch's middle name. Leaving office, the advice to send for Brown, as able to command a Labour majority in the Commons would have been properly given by Blair and others, and acted on. But the failure to have any open commitment to continuing the implementation of the 2005 Labour manifesto, indeed a declared and boasted commitment to total change that literally nobody had voted on, must have been accompanied by discussion of a general election as soon as possible. As soon as Parliament reassembled after the summer recess. An Autumn election in 2007.

Failure to keep faith with our oh so flexible constitution, failure to honour clear and reasonable premisses, even (though this cannot be known so certainly) specific undertakings, led to failure to seek the Autumn 2007 dissolution. And from those failures of faith and honour have derived all the other failures that engulf us now.

Our country does not have a government, it has a ruling junta just as we are living the worst economic and financial crisis ever. It has a bitterly resented and wholly discredited Prime Minister who can do nothing by democratic consent.

Poverty of vision

The claims are so mean-spirited, so without flair, or worth the effort. If money is to be claimed on the margins of propriety - one side or the other - go for the worthwhile.

House to refurbish? Find a good cabinet maker and panel the drawing room, double the height of the skirtings, fit book shelves on every spare wall space with cupboards under and glazed fronts. Choose lovely woods and inlays. Sink your radiators into the walls and mesh and box them. Install delicious creaking, patterned wooden floors, reconsider your doors and their architraves. And then put in a decent staircase. Put back your shutters, make your windows slide smooth as silk. Fit lovely looking glasses over your mantelpieces, themselves furbished with carving and tiling, and fire fittings worth looking at. Everyone with a fireplace will spend a lot of time looking at it.

No point going on, any one with any idea of a comfortable house can fill in every tradesman's contribution. How could they? How could they despoil their reputations and silence their consciences for tat? They could have had silver, paintings, china, hangings (well, they may get those anyway), the standard appointments of a middle class house, discreetly, decently. But in choosing wet rooms, plasma screens, baby buggies and pornographic films they are revealed in all their pig ignorance.

Only Under the New Labour Regime Could Blame Be Allocated So Dishonestly

'Police may use water cannon to control violent demonstrations', is the Times headline. Perhaps it should be noted more carefully that the G20 violence was often not on the part of the demonstrators but the police. Or are they, intriguingly, planning to use water cannon on their own rogue units?

Tax Avoidance is 'Within the Rules'

Being 'within the rules' seems to be fine to justify claiming personal and Party enrichment expenses. So why is 'within the rules' for paying tax considered borderline criminal?

Hope, Not Just Words, Fails

From the Scotsman, this morning:

'Child F was abused from the age of three months by Rennie, who knew his parents and was trusted to babysit.

Rennie took photographs and videos of his abuse of Child F, and passed them on to others. On one occasion, Milligan listened on the phone to Rennie's indecent behaviour towards the boy, and spoke to the youngster as it was happening.

The other two boys, J and B, fell prey to Strachan, who had also been allowed to babysit by their parents. A photograph of Strachan committing a gross act on J, aged 18 months, became known as "the Hogmanay image" and was one of the most harrowing shown to the jury.

Strachan had been jailed for three years in 1997 for numerous acts of indecency against a boy.

Last night, LGBT Youth Scotland, which supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, said: "We are appalled by the abuse and exploitation of children by James Rennie, and wholeheartedly welcome his conviction.

"Lothian and Borders Police have been clear that their investigations concerned Rennie personally and not LGBT Youth Scotland as an organisation. On being notified of his arrest, we acted immediately to suspend him.

"During a subsequent disciplinary process, he tendered his resignation, which we accepted.'

Systemic Abuse

After reading this morning's fascinating papers Angels is reeling at how revolting it all is. So much, much worse than wildest imaginings.

Is this the mechanism of the control exercised over the Parliamentary Labour Party by the Executive? Was any of this money claimed on Party instruction to then tithe some of it into Party funds, as is the practice in local government?

The implications of corruption go far deeper into our political system than just the disagreeable sight of so much personal profiteering by elected representatives and their unelected friends and relatives.

Nearly Over

Now we need a Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, an
Office of the Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR),

to save the archives and so that we can know, can have the measure of New Labour, their evil and corruption.

There Are Now Alternatives to Brown

The long drought of potential Labour party leaders, the unanswerable question 'Who would replace Brown?' has ended and been answered. With not one but three candidates:

Charles Clarke, Harriet Harman, and Alan Johnson. Reserve: Alan Milburn.

This is a very good shortlist: blairite; woman candidate; cente-left, moderate union, Real Labour candidate. And a reserve sufficiently inappropriate to concentrate minds. Brown's last redoubt has been overwhelmed - there are perfectly credible replacement leaders, his 'there is no alternative' position has collapsed well within time to replace him and call the confirmatory general election that he failed to call when he bullied and lied his way to the premiership. Jack Straw, the fake alternative, is dead in the water, his Iraq war status and destroyed political reputation tarnishing the idea of him even as a caretaker leader in the event of Brown's collapse from enforced external circumstances (such as ill health) rather than political defeat.

The exposure of Brown's blight mechanisms for securing his and his cronies' positions has finally ruined them. The dreadful smear plans, so thoughtlessly extended outside wholly Labour politics; the 'hairdrier' treatment for Hazel Blears that forced an apology from her to a man who is a living exemplar of refused apologies, and has driven not just Labour women but all women to consider coldly Brown's bully boy coterie and tactics; the threats to pensions, savings, working conditions, wage levels, job security, and debt-driven cuts has made Real Labour really important to its natural, mass supporters rather than its Fabian, patronising, playboy social engineers. The Labour movement isn't about bourgeois feel-good, about imposed social equity or cultural choices.

Most of all the understanding that Brown has delivered nothing but increased inequality, unemployment, gigantic tax levels, and the end of hope, that he and his cabal can deliver nothing else, regardless of elections held or denied, that they have blighted even the next generation, has ended any notion that he cannot be replaced.

Brown must be replaced. Replaced now, before even the June elections, and any of the shortlist, but preferably Alan Johnson as the most representative of the mainstream Movement, must go to the country and accept their verdict. A verdict that will be greatly ameliorated by the removal of arrogance, incompetence, bullying, and corruption.

Lisbon Is Still a Long Way From Imposition

The passing of the Lisbon Treaty vote in the Czech Republic Senate had been a foregone conclusion and already discounted. It is the President who has been always the stumbling block for Lisbon. He has stated he will not sign the ratification until the Irish referendum is overturned. Until then, Lisbon continues to be denied by Ireland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany.

It is misleading of the report in today's Telegraph to suggest that only Ireland continues to refuse to ratify Lisbon, or that the the German Constitutional court has only one matter to decide, or that is easy to forecast how the Court will rule. Poland, too, is waiting for the Irish to be put to the question again, and crumble when shown the instruments of torture. Until Ireland gives way Poland's President will not finish the process of accepting Lisbon either. Ireland is not alone and carries the conscience of the west as the Presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic carry the conscience of the east.

Loss of Service

Angels Links list has disappeared. When I find it at the week end I'll put it back and take the chance to update it.

Get Rid of Him Now, Not in June

David Cameron has called upon the electorate to use the European elections and the local elections in early June to reject the New Labour Executive and their failed Prime Minister in a kind of plebiscite, a surrogate general election. This call, of itself, gives Brown another horizon, another few weeks of respite. Respite when he should not be permitted to survive another day.

What is the matter with the Conservatives? What are they trying to protect that Brown's demise will expose to greater threat? England is deperate for a general election, desperate for Brown to be called to account. Yet the main opposition party concedes another month of democratic validity.

It's Europe, isn't it. The Conservatives are hoping Lisbon will go through before they must face our outrage at the destruction of democratic control over our own country and hold the referendum, the straightforward consultation of the people guaranteed to Ireland by its Constitution and offered to us but denied by Labour.

There begins to be a suspicion that the Conservatives, too, do not want us to be given a direct voice over Lisbon.

Getting Prescott's Continental Drift

"In countries like Africa, people queue up to vote. Whatever your political position, we hope you will vote and play a part because that's what it's all about." John Prescott campaigning for the Labour Party in York city centre today.

Less Authority, More Learning

Re-establishing authority is the purpose of speeches that will be offered to us by the flailing Prime Minister, beginning today with one on education.

Education has produced an entire generation from rising fives to sixteen plusses since the big blunt felt tip began to scrawl across our futures. We know that more than a third of that generation cannot read, write or do simple number. We know too, and perhaps this is worse, that many more are unable to spell, punctuate, construct formal sentences, command different modes of speech, have no foreign languages, no musical training, have lost their sports fields and swimming pools, are without libraries and even text books, and certainly face teachers under-skilled and poorly trained to teach subjects as central to any education as physics, chemistry, mathematics, classics or German. So that cannot have been the primary purpose of education since 1997.

The wasteland has been produced, at enormous cost but here we are, at year zero. The next five or ten year plan will be revealed, to be implemented by the so ominously named Department for Children, Schools and Families with its built-in Respect Taskforce.

Lines are to be drawn - big, thick, ugly lines between Them, who offer austerity and retrenchment in the face of financial and economic collapse and dreadful indebtedness, both public and private, and Us, who offer growth and opportunity. To be what? Entitled, but with duties. Duties to the government which is to be seen as the state. Entitlements available only to the obedient and enrolled. Enrolment made compulsory. The thick dividing line that should exist between school and family moved to encompass what remnants of family survive after indoctrination posing as teaching and provision which is compulsorily consumed within New Labour's social discipline.

But we've had far too much authority-establishment over the last dozen years. Apologizing with humility would suit us all much better. And far better austerity and repayment, with education shrunk back to the smaller goal of teaching literacy and numeracy with more for those who have the skills and thirst for learning, than further impoverishment to fund the remaking of society in an acquiescent New Labour image.

Proud of Your Red Lines Now Brown?

Dr Marchionne says that closing down car plants isn't a realistic option in Europe, where many workers are shielded by contracts that make it costly for companies to lay off workers. During a recent conference call with analysts, notes the Wall Street Journal, Dr Marchionne said he preferred cutting back production at some plants rather than shutting them down entirely.

Now, where are there workers who are not 'shielded by contracts that make it costly for companies to lay off workers.'? Where might it be easiest to cut back production rather than shut down plants entirely?

As Blair negotiated accession to the Lisbon Treaty under Brown's exigent direction, the 'red lines' were drawn to protect the untrammelled market in labour that ostensibly had helped to create Brown's never-ending boom, the banishing of bust in the British economy.

How can any worker support Brown's continued Leadership of the Labour Party?

Cornered in London

The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, and the deposit of the ratification documents in Rome (this last an essential part of the process of putting the Lisbon Treaty into operation) continues to be misrepresented by the media and continues to be prevented by the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and Ireland.

Ireland voted the Treaty down by referendum and is the most obvious stumbling block. The Czech Republic and Poland still have stages of parliamentary and/or Presidential agreement plus depositing the papers to get through. But Germany has not one but two constitutional challenges before its Constitutional Court, with very serious conflicts between the German Constitution and the Lisbon Constitution being considered and the President of Germany awaiting constitutional rulings before proceeding further.

By Executive ratification and deposit Gordon Brown has betrayed the United Kingdom, and betrayed the commitment in the Labour manifesto, in denying holding a referendum on major constitutional change in the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union. Not that such would deter a man so easy in his standards and malfunctioning moral compass. But there is a price to pay, and we are watching him paying it. Brown is of no further service to the European Union powers. The UK is in the bag and even public courtesies have been withdrawn from someone who has made himself uniformly objectionable over so long within the EU. His last hurrah was at the ill-fated April 'summit' when there was still a query whether further looting of nation state tax-payers might be possible. All he delivered was dinner and a photo opportunity marred by infinitely worse photos of the dead and beaten.

So while four member states hold the line against EU antidemocratic authoritarian rule, Brown is now on his own, and facing our people in all his betrayal and in desperate need of our support.