Last Rights

That was the week [*] that was,
It’s over so let it go.

 [*] Actually it’s been ten days — or an aching void of tooth-grinding boredom for anyone not committed to an asylum, the Daily Mail, the Times world-view, or the Tory Party. Though those four possibilities may merely be variations on a theme.

Anyway, let’s relish the unpaid viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INxp98-2i6A

No need to stick around beyond the first two minutes, unless one is a media-archaeologist. Just relish the delights of Millicent Martin at her devastating best.

Two final Malcolmian thoughts:

1. Pity the Goldthorpe counter-event didn’t get more coverage:

Britain mourned, the old banners were hoisted up in Goldthorpe and the miners went on the march.

At 2pm today, after waiting for a separate funeral in the South Yorkshire town to come to an end, an estimated 1000 former pit workers started a procession through the streets in protest at Baroness Thatcher.

An effigy of the former Prime Minister was placed in a coffin with the word ‘SCAB’ written in flowers on the side. It was then placed on a cart and towed by two horses towards the site of the former Goldthorpe colliary, which closed in 1994. A bagpiper led the way and the miners marched behind, some holding placards, most clutching cans of beer.

The entire town appeared to have turned out to join in the protest and chanted ”ere we go’ and ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, down, down, down’ as they walked. Banners from the original miners’ strike were waved on proud display.

“We have waited 28 years for this,” said David Fallon, a former hydraulics fitter at Goldthorpe colliery, who worked at the site for fifteen years and was wearing his former pit tie – complete with the white rose of Yorkshire.

All credit to the Daily Telegraph for that: a good deed in a naughty world. The intent was, presumably, to shock Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

What Disgusted will have missed is the whole event is not pure anger — though that would be well justified across the South Yorks coalfields. It’s more a first-class example of South (formerly West — don’t fret on it) Yorkshire humour. Just remember to wear a respectable association tie, with a white rose. Since Dear Old Dad originated just down the road from Goldthorpe,  Malcolm knows the mood well. It was likely a bloke from Goldthorpe or environs who addressed the Great Len Hutton, having scored a double century, with “Ah hopes ta see thee do better in t’ second innings.” Such a type is one who looks out of the window on 23rd June and observes how the evenings are drawing in.

2. Malcolm was touched by the dignitaries from the United States who made it all the way to St Paul’s:

Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn will lead a House delegation to Britain to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Wednesday.

Announced by House Speaker John Boehner’s office Monday, the trip marks a culmination of Republican accolades for Thatcher following her death last week. Thatcher’s conservative policies and close relationship with President Reagan won her widespread support within the GOP.

“Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest champions freedom has ever known, and her funeral gives Americans and friends around the world an opportunity to pay final respects,” Boehner said in a statement.

The delegation also includes Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and George Holding (R-N.C.).

Yes: that truly is Michele Bachmann, [t]he only person dumber than Sarah Palin. As for Marsha Wedgeworth Blackburn, she is doubly distinguished —

• four times awarded 100% rating by the American Conservative Union: i.e. off the normal political spectrum, and impervious to reason. To be fair, she is now down to 87½% , and only the 40th most conservative member of the House as rated bt the National Journal.

and,

• because her election accounting is less than transparent, one of the Most Corrupt Members of Congress identified by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Malcolm explains his concern with such trivia because it gives cause for recalling Simon Hoggart’s Sketch of the occasion in today’s Guardian. It is juicily headed:

Politicians reassure themselves of their importance at Lady Thatcher’s funeral

No wonder Gordon Brown looked happy as the great and the good gathered to say farewell

It concludes with the pungent:

A scattering of celebrities, just on the right side of “who on Earth?” Jeremy Clarkson, Joan Collins, Jeffrey Archer, even Michael Fabricant MP, his lustrous hair-style topping for once dimmed by the dazzling lights of St Paul’s. And Alex Salmond, who acknowledges his gratitude; her decision to start the loathed poll tax in Scotland was a huge impetus towards the notion of national independence.

 A disappointing turnout from abroad, good in numbers if low in fame. But then this was about British politics rather than international diplomacy. From America, Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich – surely she would have found him deeply distasteful? – and former vice-president Dick Cheney, whose poor health over eight years meant, in Garry Trudeau’s words, that George W was “only a heartbeat from the presidency”. But neither Bush nor Clinton and no Carter. It was hard to ignore the niggle that she was, perhaps, more world famous in Britain than she was in the rest of the world.

Conclusion

Dave Brown is being properly recognised as a star political cartoonist — this for the Independent on Wednesday:

Figuring it out

The classic Thomist angels-on-a-pin-head is updated by the constant debate on UK unemployment numbers. Today (despite the Thatcher-fest) should inspire a new outbreak:

UK unemployment rose by 70,000 to 2.56 million between December and February, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.

It meant the unemployment rate for the quarter was 7.9%.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance last month fell by 7,000 to 1.53 million.

Also, the ONS said average regular pay, excluding bonuses, rose 1%, the lowest since records began more than a decade ago.

The number of people in work fell by 2,000 in the latest quarter to February, to just under 30 million, the first time the figure has dipped since autumn 2011.

The ONS data also revealed that 900,000 people have been out of work for more than a year, an 8,000 increase on the three months to November, while the number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds rose by 20,000 to 979,000.

Despite the increase in unemployment, the total is 71,000 lower than a year ago. There has been a 62,000 fall in the number of people in part-time jobs, to just over eight million, with a 60,000 increase in full-time employment, to 21.6 million.

As day follows night, the ConDem understrappers have to see all that as “good news”:

Employment Minister Mark Hoban welcomed the fall in the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JA), and especially the drop among young people.

Only in a parallel universe is the ministry for unemployment named so perversely. Hoban seems to hail two glad tidings:

1. That the numbers failing to claim “JobSeeker’s Allowance” (it used to be unemployment benefit, and was seen as a right which was paid for by deductions from paid salaries while in work) are down. What that amounts to is many are being dissuaded from claiming their due benefits because of the “skiving” hysteria generated by government propaganda.

2. “… especially the drop among young people.” What drop? In the number of claimants, presumably — see (1) immediately above. The Office of National Statistics are reporting an increase! 18-24 year olds up 20,000 in the quarter, and up 1.5% over twelve months. This is the actuality:

A coolie economy

Beyond these numbers lies a harsher truth. The British are being educated into a low-wage, low-productivity economy. Cheap labour is making investment and industrial improvement unnecessary. Last month the Financial Times‘s Brian Groom was getting closer to the real problem:

Output per hour worked fell 2.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2012 compared with a year earlier, fuelling concern about the UK’s poor productivity since the recession of 2008-09.

The figure was down 0.5 per cent compared with the previous quarter and was the sixth successive quarterly fall, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

John Philpott, director of the Jobs Economist consultancy, said: “The figures for manufacturing productivity are very worrying. Output per hour in the manufacturing sector has now fallen for five successive quarters and in Q4 2012 was 5.2 per cent lower than a year earlier.”

He added: “Such a sharp and prolonged fall is in marked contrast to much of the period since the start of the recession in 2008, during which time manufacturing productivity has generally increased.”

Weak productivity has resulted in an overall rise in unit labour costs despite a squeeze on wages, although this has slowed since the past two quarters.

Other figures show that earnings are growing at just 0.8% over the year, while consumer prices are running at 2.8% (and predicted to rise further to 3.5% by the middle of 2013). Lest we forget, the great ConDem economic miracle (founded 2010) was going to be founded on:

•  a shift from public- to private-sector employment (going nicely, thank you: public sector redundancies continue apace); and
• Britain’s economy would power ahead on consumer spending.

At this point, let us bear in mind a painful fundamental:

Productivity is a key economic indicator used to measure the efficiency and competitiveness of an economy. It is a key factor determining the underlying ‘trend’ or ‘potential’ rate of growth of an economy over the medium-term.

Excuses! Excuses!

Ah, but it’s been the bad weather! Snow! Sun! Drought! Flood! €-crisis! Royal wedding! Locusts in Belgravia! Olympics! Jubilee! Earthquakes in Dorset! (Take your pick, as Gids Osborne does at each reiteration).

Except reality peeps through this dense fog of dissimulation, as Abigail Hughes and Jumana Saleheen ever-so-polititely explained in their study for the second quarter bulletin of 2012. This, without fanfares, gave us the quite shocking comparison of Labour productivity across countries (see right).

It doesn’t need any great expertise in graphicity to spot that, in the years of the Labour government, British productivity was consistently improving and outstripping the competitive economies. Since the crisis, all that has gone into reverse.

Meeow!

The usual explanation of why production and productivity are falling, while employment hasn’t yet plummeted, is “labour hoarding”. Employers, not necessarily out of loyalty to their employees, keep a larger work-force than they currently require. That has a logic: no business, in straits, is without a Micawber belief that Something will turn up; and reliable employees are not a commodity to be dispensed with lightly. Others place weight on a woolly notion of “intangible investment” (that amounts to improved R&D and ‘software’) — something with all the odour of a ‘thought experiment’, an economist’s version of Schrödinger’s cat.

Coagulating creaking crap!

The Tory poster campaign for the 2005 General Election was hardly subtle:

Wherever you went across the country, two months before the expected (and eventually declared) date, these posters appeared. All with the same “closed question”: Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Fortunately Michael Howard’s attempt at mood-management didn’t work. The Tories had bought in Lynton Crosbie, who had been the political strategist for John Howard’s four election victories in Australia. Britain was thus introduced to the dubious benefits of “dog-whistle politics”.

In 2013 the Tories are just as desperate — and even more blatant. There’s a short, bottom-of-the-page piece by Marie Woolf in the Sunday Times. Well, they had to squeeze it in somewhere: much of the rest of the issue is devoted to “Maggie Thatcher still dead! Official!” Here it comes:

Poor countries should be paid to process asylum seekers who are trying to get to Britain to stop them “disappearing” onto our streets, says a plan published by a group of influential right-wingers within the Conservative party.

Now Malcolm reckons he’s read that opener at least three time — and still doesn’t “get it”. Why the “disappearing” bit? If people immigrate, and then are indistinguishable within the whole population, have they not assimilated successfully?

The rest of the pieces is very much “tell me the same old story” — all the predictable terms are there: the Tory fret over a surge in support for the UK Independence party, the need for harsh immigration controls; deportees should appeal only after they being deported …

There has to be a Wizard behind the mask of this Oz nonsense. Step forward the plan’s begetter:

Julian Brazier MP for Canterbury [who] claims that housing, schooling, the welfare state and even the sewerage system are creaking under the strain of immigration.

Excuses! Excuses!

Gids Osborne has been baling the failure of his economics of the previous government (until that one was laughed down), the weather, snow, floods, drought, the royal wedding, the Olympics and anything else that came to mind. That set the pattern:

• Now the housing crisis in the South-East (and it is mainly in the South-East and where the bourgeoisie buy their second and holiday homes) is the fault of immigrants! Not, as most realists thought, because the privatising of social housing has been a disaster.
• The schools crisis is not because Gove pulled the plug on the previous government’s plans — no, no! it’s all down to immigrants who don’t speak English.
• The social security system is also stretched because of the number of immigrants who are unemployed … three of the top five nationalities for settling in Britain — Bangladeshis, Nigerians and Pakistanis — “have well above average unemployment rates”.  Actually, as other statistics show that’s more a function of social class than ethnic origin. And what are the determinants of class — and so employability? Education, perchance, for one?

The blockage in the pipes

Sitting on the 299 bus, en route to a liquid lunch at Ye Olde Cherry Tree in Southgate, it was the Lady in Malcolm’s Life who spotted the killer: the creaking of the sewerage system.

It’s got to be vindaloo.

Marry and burn

A heart of stone is needed, not to mock the continuing havoc an eight-letter word is causing the Tory Party.

At a quick count, at toast-and-marmalade-time today, seven of the top eight (that number again!) items on ConHome Newslinks were about “marriage” — single-sex, the financial arrangements thereof, and other hokey-cokeys. There’s even one of those annoying rolling ads for the Coalition for Marriage.

From Institute to Coalition (across the hall-way)

This Coalition for Marriage deserves a moment’s attention. Its address is 5 Park Road, Gosforth. This takes us to a soul-less warehousing development on the outskirts of Newcastle — within whiffing distance of the big Greggs pasty plant across the hedge. Presumably no coincidence, it is bang next door to The Christian Institute of  Wilberforce House, 4 Park Road, Gosforth. For all the “Christian” ethos here, the “Christian Institute” seems to have a particular track record:

• it sought to retain Thatcher’s vindictive Clause 28, discriminating against the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality;
• it argued for an older age-of-consent in homosexual relationships;
• it opposed Civil Partnerships;
• it opposed single-sex adoption rights;
• it meddled in Northern Ireland’s attempts to draw up rules on gender equality;
• it funded a case in Islington, where a Council employee refused to work on the documentation of civil partnerships (and lost);
• it funded the boarding-house owner who discriminated against gays(and lost).

Not surprisingly, then, the Institute has repeatedly been warned off crossing the line between “charity” and political activism.

Oh, and the Institute are New Earthers, theocrats, and bigots:

The Bible is without error not only when it speaks of salvation, its own origins, values, and religious matters, but it is also without error when it speaks of history and the cosmos. Christians must, therefore, submit to its supreme authority, both individually and corporately, in every matter of belief and conduct.

Anyone for an auto-da-fé?

The Christian Institute is strong on discipline:

The Church’s calling is to worship and serve God in the world, to proclaim and defend his truth, to exhibit his character and to demonstrate the reality of his new order.

New order … where did we come on that before? Then, in the original, was it not more correctly Neuordnung?

And also hot on punishment:

Evildoers will suffer eternal punishment. God will fully establish his kingdom when he creates a new heaven and a new earth from which evil, suffering and death will be excluded, and in which he will be glorified for ever.

Ah, yes: bring back the old ways of glorifying for ever:

A Malcolmian solution:

Ever one to be helpful, Malcolm reckons he has a way to satisfy all but the most extreme theocrat:

• Allow whatever religious, denominational or whatever practices of human bonding to persist, but keep them at pitchfork’s length from the State;
• Recognise only civil-marriage sand registrations of relationships to be recognised for official State needs.

In other words, do as they do in France — a civil and (should the couple wish) a religious ceremony. But only the one has the official imprimatur — and it has to happen first. If the Château de Candé was good enough for an (ex-)King and Emperor, then the local Town Hall should suit anyone else.

The sky is falling! (selectively)

Murdoch’s Times not only went tabloid, it has acquired some down-market degeneracies with it.

A couple of posts back, Malcolm was whining about the comic’s fullest fluffy Murdochian populism. He now bemoans a parallel ghoulish, blood-chilling, thrill-seeking sensationalism.

The Melanie Phillips memorial meme

What provoked this was the third Comment article in yesterday’s fish-n-chip wrapper. After Finkelstein (a contract artist, so comes with the fixtures and fittings) on the holocaust, and the German Foreign Minister soft-soaping the chasm between Cameron and Merkel, comes Maajid Nawaz:

Muslim patrols are s sign of things to come

We should worry that battle-hardened fanatics could impose their dogma on Britain’s streets

Then — yawn! — his opening tries to draw straight-lines across a very uneven surface:

On the streets of Greece supporters of the far-Right Golden Dawn party patrol neighbourhoods, attacking anyone who looks like an immigrant. In Denmark a group calling itself Call to Islam has declared parts of the country to be “sharia-controlled zones” and its “morality police” confront drinkers and partygoers. In France right-wing vigilantes ran Roma families out of a Marseilles estate and burnt down their camp. In Spain nine Islamist extremists recently kidnapped a woman, tried her for adultery under sharia and attempted to execute her before she managed to escape. And here English Defence League thugs march in towns and cities “reclaiming” the streets from Muslims.

Something very worrying is spreading across Europe. Fascist and and Islamist extremists alike are copying what Hitler’s Brownshirts excelled at — enforcing with threats and violence their version of the law in neighbourhoods, And the moderate middle is left gawping.

Well, well: if that had appeared in any inter chat chat-room, Mike Godwin would be invoked:

It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The Nazi-comparison meme, I’d decided, had gotten out of hand – in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as “similar to the Nazis” or “Hitler-like” was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer…

I developed Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Then there’s the other matter: proportion. The European Union embraces a population of nigh on half-a-billion. Let’s be generous to Maajid Nawaz: he has identified, at most, a few hundred ne’er-do-wells. His nine Spanish Islamists amount to 0.00000019% of the people of Spain. Similarly, there’s a Grand Canyon of difference between the hysterical:

The complete Islamification of Tower Hamlets continues, as anyone who dares to “look like a fag” or drink alcohol in their declared republic now risks harassment walking in the street.

and the factual:

A small group of individuals were recently seen harassing members of the public in East London, and the council is proactively working with partners in the community and police to monitor for further incidents and take appropriate action.

And the marauding Muslim hordes of E1 amounted to precisely —

A fifth person has been detained after a video of a ‘vigilante Muslim gang’ tormenting members of the public in east London was released on YouTube.

The 17-year-old boy was questioned at a police station in Walthamstow in relation to incidents that were posted on the video sharing website on January 12 and 13.

The pillars of bourgeois society have not even been vibrated. The events Maajid Nawaz wants to daisy-chain are, taken one by one, not insignificant — but on a continental scale do not register on the Richter Scale of earth-shakers.

Another small country about which we know nothing

Curiously, though, Maajid Nawaz omitted one obvious civil disruption.

We have had some eight weeks of continuing street riots in East Belfast, orchestrated by the local UVF. Arson-attempts, especially on Roman Catholic targets, are regular events. The Police Service have reported dozen of officers injured, truing to contain the almost-nightly excursions. Numerous arrests have been made. The cost is now running towards eight figures. And the machinators are known to all:

A small number of senior UVF men are directing the riots in east Belfast that have brought shame on Northern Ireland.

Two senior henchmen of the UVF chief in east Belfast have ignored warnings from the organisation’s leadership to bring an end to the violence which has left dozens of PSNI officers injured and cost millions of pounds.

And while the UVF’s leader in the east of the city — as the ‘Beast from the East’ — could end the rioting immediately, he has failed to bring his men under control.

Even Andrew Gillian, at the [London] Daily Telegraph knows where to go calling:

What East Belfast, Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey do have in common, however, are maverick factions of the Loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force.

“We’ve got no doubt whatever that this is coming from the UVF,” says Terry Spence, leader of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland.

The East Belfast leader of the UVF – the so-called “Beast from the East” – was not at home to callers when The Telegraph dropped in to his small terraced house in a quiet side street.

His white reinforced front door doesn’t have a knocker or a bell, but there are five CCTV cameras just in case anyone tries to murder him again.

Two of his lieutenants have been spotted in the background helping direct the main East Belfast riots.

Security sources say they are acting with the Beast’s consent, if not the UVF leadership’s active involvement, and he could end the trouble in the area whenever he wanted.

Ugly Doris

If you go to those-in-the-know, you’ll hear a lot about this reclusive figure. Here’s an Analysis from the Irish Times, eighteen months ago:

THE SO-CALLED “Beast from the East” took over the Ulster Volunteer Force in east Belfast about six years ago and has strengthened his power base since then, according to well-placed loyalist sources. He and some of his senior lieutenants are chiefly responsible for the violence in east Belfast over recent days, they say.

He makes his money mainly from “gangster-on-gangster or bad-on-bad crime”, which is chiefly about drug dealing and extorting other criminals – while also managing to maintain some distance from these activities to keep him, so far, out of prison. How to clip his wings is the challenge for the police and also for other members of the UVF…

… what is happening in Short Strand and on the Newtownards Road in east Belfast these past dangerous nights is not about the dissidents. It is about the UVF, which is fomenting the disturbances. And it is primarily about the UVF leader in east Belfast nicknamed the Beast from the East or “Ugly Doris”. The first nom de guerre relates to his east Belfast bailiwick and the second refers to the late Jim Gray, the UDA east Belfast leader or “brigadier” murdered by his own people. He was called Doris Day because of his blond hair and his fondness for Hawaiian shirts, pink jumpers and gold jewellery. The UVF leader is said to resemble Gray only in his strands of blond hair – hence Ugly Doris.

According to senior loyalist sources, the new man, who is in his 40s, has “lost the run of himself” and is becoming increasingly dangerous and, some fear, almost unstable. “He is creating a little empire for himself in east Belfast and is now flexing his muscles,” said one loyalist insider. “He is also partial to cocaine and likes to party . . . He believes he is untouchable.”

The Belfast Telegraph identified the East Belfast UVF as:

… the most powerful paramilitary faction in Northern Ireland.

With a fiefdom stretching from the Lagan’s edge on the Newtownards Road to Millisle, Donaghadee and beyond, it struts a swathe of territory no other loyalist element can match.

It has dwarfed the UDA in east Belfast and the Ards Peninsula to the point where seasoned paramilitaries declare a ‘no contest’ between the two loyalist terror groups.

Note that didn’t say most powerful Loyalist paramilitary faction in Northern Ireland. Nor are we considering a handful of self-advertisers in Brick Lane, or even a tight little gang of perverts in Malaga. This is something far bigger, far nearer to the dystopia with which Maajid Nawaz would wish to chill us.

What you don’t find in those columns, usually, is a given name for the Beast a.k.a. Ugly Doris. He is (pace Susanne Breen) A former prisoner from a well-known loyalist family. His code-title is “S” [the UVF just lurve these Ian Flemingesque touches]. Look a bit further and you’ll find the name of Stephen Matthews.

Now there’s a candidate for Maajid Nawaz’s little black book.

MRD still A

Malcolm hopes nobody has forgotten MRDA. There’s a memory nudge on the right of this screen.

The delicious, delightful and definitely dangerous Mandy came instantly to mind after this, from the LibDem MP, John Leech (majority 1,894):

The government has published its mid-term report, and as expected Media coverage is naturally focusing on parts of the agreement that are not on track. However our own party analysis shows about 95% of the Coalition Agreement is on course.

The MTR also shows the huge extent of Liberal Democrat influence in Government. We have taken policies directly from the front page of our Manifesto and we are now delivering on them in Government.

Mr Leech then helpfully lists his Top 10 Liberal Democrat Achievements!

No: he doesn’t mention the double- or possibly treble-dip recession.

He doesn’t find space to mention £9,000 fees.

Minor stuff like that must be the delinquent 5%.

The LibDems are:

Delivering an extra £2.5 billion into schools!

That is despite:

the largest cut in education spending over a four-year period since the 1950s [Channel 4 News]

and

Funding for struggling schools has been slashed to cover a £1bn overspend in the academies programme [The Independent].

On Planet Leech the Lib Dems are:

Creating 1 million jobs and 1 million apprenticeships. 84% more apprenticeships in Manchester

and

Youth unemployment is lower than when we took office, thanks to our £1 billion Youth Contract, which gets young people off the dole and into work through apprenticeships, work placement or training.

Which runs the face of the reason of the Daily Telegraph:

The “bleak” outlook for young people is predicted within a new study by the Institute of Public Policy Research, which also expects long-term unemployment to near the 1m mark. Both figures would put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of permanent “scarring” in the labour market, the IPPR said…

The headline unemployment rate shows there are 2.56m unemployed people in Britain. But the consultancy report shows a further 3.05m are “under-employed” – desparate to find more work or longer hours but cannot – and a further 2.58m people are “economically inactive” but want a paid job.

The overall work shortage rate compared to the working age population is 23.8pc; three times higher than the official unemployment rate.

That, to some extent, trumps Stephanie Flanders’ wondering about the statistic that Britain’s finest economic brains simply cannot explain. Contrary to Leech’s cooking the books on youth unemployment:

Figures released today (16/11/11) show that the overall number of jobseekers allowance claimants has risen by 9,770 (13.5%) in Greater Manchester over the past year.

With national youth unemployment now past the 1 million mark, Greater Manchester saw a slight monthly rise in the number of claimants aged 16-24 of 180 (0.7%) to 27,080 – the highest level since youth unemployment peaked in the wake of the recession, and a level not seen since March 2010.

Memo to Mr Leech: the ConDems took over in May 2010.

Let’s not omit here Leech trumpeting that the LibDems:

 Secured the biggest ever cash rise in the full state pension, worth an extra £650 every year.

“Worth”, Mr Leech? Michael Meacher’s and the Kushners’ letter in today’s Guardian give chapter-and-verse of how ConDem policies are hurting. Or, specific to pensioners, there’s this:

For the whole population, inflation – measured by the retail prices index – has jumped by 14.4 per cent since September 2007.

For those aged 50 to 64, it has been 18.5 per cent, rising to 20.1 per cent for those aged 65 to 74. 

But it jumped 20.3 per cent for people aged 75 and above. Dr Ros Altmann, director general of Saga, said the ‘horrifying’ figures highlight the problems facing older people battling inflation on a fixed income.

Added to which:

the charity Age UK said the cost of living has added £1,173 to bills  for those aged 55 and above in  a year.

Does that qualify as an achievement, Mr Leech?

Malcolm really cannot be arsed to demolish the rest of this friable, tendentious nonse, but number 10 of Mr Leech’s achievements deserves a lunge for the sick-bag:

 Scrapped ID cards and removed innocent people’s DNA from the police database

Aw, sweet! Fair enough: but you and your colleagues are complicit in the:

Draft Communications Data Bill [which] wants to force ISPs to store the who, when and where of all online activity, including email, instant messaging, social media activity, web browsing and VoIP calls for a year.

So it’s back to Miss Rice-Davies for the last word:

Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations (J. M. & M. J. Cohen, 1971) 190:69

Down with your benefits!

Be careful what you wish for!

Let us hope that the Great British Public wake up, and realise what is being legislated in their name.

• Why is the the cost of benefits currently exceeding the Government’s plans? Surely, it cannot be because the wholeConDem scenario has gone whoopsie?

Now consider todays’s  Second reading of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill:

• The Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by the measures are in work.
• The Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a single-earner family with children on average will be £534 worse off by 2015.
• The Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit.
• Should there be a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill?
• Should it include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more?
• Should the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, to give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits? This could be funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent.
• Is the Bill unfair, at a time when  the rich are receiving a further bunce, and an additional rate of income tax is being reduced? This will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.

Most of that is taken, verbatim, from the Labour amendment to Iain Duncan Smith’s Make Labour Look Like the Party for Skiving Fat Slobs bill  [© Andrew Rawnsley].

Malcolm confidently predicts that, outside a small circle of friends (the Barclay brothers and their Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, the Murdoch lie-machine), this little Osborne ploy may quickly go sour. It will certainly poison the whole North/South division of British society, and may even do for the devolution debate what Thatcher’s Poll Tax did for the rise of the SNP.

But then, by 2015, the Tory Party may well have ceased to exist outside the plush leafy suburbs and the county areas with equestrian properties.

“Popular”? With whom?

The Buckeye Firearms Foundation (as in Ohio, “the Buckeye State”) followed up the Sandy Hook child massacre with:

a program to provide firearm training to teachers free of charge…

“The long-term goal is to develop a standard Armed Teacher curriculum and make the training available to any teacher or school official,” said [Ken] Hanson ["BFA's Legal Chair"]. “To begin, we will use funds from our educational foundation and solicit donations from corporations to pay for the program. Going forward, we will seek funding from a variety of sources to expand the training.”

 No comments, please, on the possibility of an “illegal chair”. Or that the acronym “BFA” is ripe for umpteen alternative expansions, many of which are coarse or scabrous. Or, that in July 2011, the BFA organised its (somewhat ambiguously-named) 1st Annual Buckeye Firearms Foundation Youth Shoot, “north of Zanesville”.

Educationalists and parents will be delighted by the success of the BFA’s initiative:

So far, the Armed Teacher Training Program has attracted more than 600 applicants from all parts of Ohio and several from other states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia. More teachers inquire about the program every day.

“We knew this would be popular, but the response has exceeded our expectations,” said Jim Irvine, Chairman of the non-profit Buckeye Firearms Foundation.

That press release is a truly enlightening document. Malcolm savoured much thereof, and here adds some choice quotations:

• While Ohio generally prohibits firearms at schools, the law includes a provision that allows teachers and staff to carry firearms if the school board approves it. The Armed Teacher Training Program seeks to help teachers get permission to carry concealed firearms on the job and provide advanced training that goes above and beyond the typical requirements of concealed carry.
• Irvine says the program is entirely voluntary. “No one will be forced to be armed if they choose not to. The strategy is the same as ordinary concealed carry. No one will ever know who is or is not armed. Those who would seek to do harm in schools should be met with armed resistance even before law enforcement shows up. Over time, schools will no longer be considered easy, risk-free targets.”
• Irvine says the idea isn’t new. “For 25 years, citizens in the U.S. have been legally carrying concealed firearms. A total of 49 states now allow concealed carry, some with no licensing or training of any kind. The concept has worked remarkably well. Most of those who were initially skeptical now admit that citizens can be trusted to act lawfully and responsibly. Millions of ordinary people carry firearms in malls, on buses and city streets, and in restaurants and office buildings. It works for average citizens even in highly populated locations, so why would anyone assume armed teachers in schools would be any different?”
• A few people have questioned the idea of arming teachers who have no firearm experience or may be uncomfortable with guns. “That’s a misunderstanding of what we’re doing,” said Rieck. “Applicants for the program are not firearm novices. More than half already have a Concealed Handgun License. About 40 percent of our applicants say they have previous self-defense training. Over 60 percent say they have moderate to extensive firearm experience. And over 80 percent have experience with handguns.”

Cue Tom Paxton (or failing him, Pete Seeger):

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes,
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.

That’s what I learned in school today,
That’s what I learned in school.

Or, here’s the nearest thing Malcolm can find from Paxton himself:

Hat-tip to Mother Jones.

Shooting the messenger?

Here’s one that will have after-shocks:

A police constable with the diplomatic protection group has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, Met Police say.

The officer was arrested late on Saturday and bailed on Sunday to return in January. He has been suspended.

The arrest was made by officers investigating how national newspapers came to publish police records of an incident at Downing Street.

In other words, the Met have thrown thousands at an internal investigation and pay for a suspended officer. Mitchell (a miserable non-apology for a ‘gentleman’) largely got away with it. OK, he lost office, but he was over-promoted, he owned his elevation to Cameron’s need to keep his right-wing ultras in line, and the nation is not greatly at a loss for dispensing with his services: in Sir George Young the Tory Party, parliament and the country have the better man.

Presumably the Met is still racing to catch up with its own serial failures (at far higher levels than any mere police constable) and complicities with the Murdoch press.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Ex America semper aliquid novum

Malcolm reckons two elements should inspire a good blog offering:

• Serendipity: Horace Walpole’s invention, for:

The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery.

Well, so far, there’s nothing ‘happy’ to be extracted from the Newtown CT massacre.

• Bizarrerie, which Malcolm discussed at some length recently.

Somewhere in there comes this, from the New York Times:

Newtown, incorporated in 1711, takes its child-friendly, Norman Rockwell ambience seriously. The all-purpose landmark is the downtown flagpole, which dates to 1876. Fat and packed with small-town ephemera, including weekly equestrian news, The Newtown Bee dates to 1877. Scrabble was developed in Newtown by a local lawyer, James Brunot, in 1948, who adapted an earlier version and changed its name from “Criss-Cross Words” to “Scrabble.”

That article is topped-and-tailed by references to a local business selling Christmas trees.

Scrabble, Christmas trees … it all seems so reasonable, so normal in an unreasonable, abnormal context. One has to reach to grasp a vestige of sanity.

For the record, it’s about 75 miles — say, around a hundred minutes driving time — from Stockbridge, Massachusetts (the Norman Rockwell home) to Newtown, Connecticut. Malcolm has to wonder what the late-period Rockwell would have drawn this weekend. It would be telling, caring, gentle, and incisive: it would be infused by some of that quiet anger — liberal angst, if one must —  that went into The Problem We All Live With, the painting of six-year-old Ruby Bridges going to school in New Orleans (and which hung for a while outside Obama’s Oval Office).

Or perhaps it would reflect the earlier, Birthday Surprise:

Here’s to those dedicated teachers who gave their all on Friday.