Downing Street Petition – Virgin On The Embarrassing

Following the award of the franchise to run services on the West Coast Mail Line (WCML) to First Group, and their admission – as I predicted last week – that stations would be barriered off, starting with Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street, has come a petition in support of incumbent operator Virgin Trains (VT), originated by Ross McKillop, who asserts that VT have provided a reliable service.

Well, up to a point: McKillop, who is 29, may not remember the early days of the VT operation, which were shambolic and not a good advert for either the Virgin brand, or for the railways in general. Had Richard Branson not summoned Chris Green, aka The Good And Great Grey Controller, back from exile to head up VT, Virgin would have lost its franchises. And it would have deserved to have lost them.

But Green and his successors have steered VT through the chaos of the post-Hatfield work, what sometimes seemed the unending upgrading of the WCML, the introduction of a new fleet of trains, and most recently the implementation of a higher frequency and faster timetable, remarkably well. So, yes, it is most likely that today’s VT customers will have a positive image of the operation.

Not sure if that's allowable

And it is therefore no surprise that the petition passed the 100,000 mark, which triggers the potential for a Parliamentary debate, without any problem. The current total stands at over 118,000. The petition has been advertised not only by Branson, but also has been slipped onto the platform display indicators at stations run by VT, which may be viewed as a little naughty.

So what could happen if there is a debate? By the time it happens, the number crunchers will have gone over First’s figures and whether their passenger and revenue projections are realistic. Any finding suggesting that they are not would be highly embarrassing to the Government, especially following two failed bids for the East Coast Route and, indeed, First calling their own Great Western one wrong.

The matter of First’s indifferent customer service may also be raised, and those with longer memories may look at their takeover of what is now Transpennine Express from then incumbent Arriva. First fouled that one up only moderately, but typically tried to dump the blame on Arriva. I claim some experience: I was a regular traveller on those trains at that time.

And, I’m afraid, all the fault I could attribute was First’s. They were fortunate, though, as Arriva were not quite as swift to run to the media as their successors. There will be no such benefit from Virgin. The Government is on a lose-lose track here: it cannot credibly row back on its decision, First won’t be able to dump mistakes on Virgin, and the ultimate arbiters – the travelling public – will punish them both.

A punishment which will start with a very public Parliamentary debate.

He Gove And He Also Taketh Away

The behaviour of Education Secretary Michael “Oiky” Gove is in the spotlight once more, and this time it looks to be serious, and not just for his career, but the education of thousands of teenagers around the country who were expecting to achieve a Grade “C” pass in their GCSE English exams, were predicted so to do, and yet when they opened the envelope saw it was only a “D”.

If it quacks like a Gove ...

What is claimed to have happened is that there has been a moving of the “grade boundaries”, that is, the point on the marking scale which divides one grade from another. The dividing line between “A” and “B”, and that between “C” and “D”, are said to have been moved upwards. If this is true, it is simply inexcusable. Moving the goalposts during a course is bang out of order.

Gove claims he wants to raise standards, and also does not see the merit in the numbers getting the highest grades rising every year. But students and their teachers are working under the understanding that the GCSE is criterion based – you get the mark, you get the grade – and not marked normatively, as the “O” Level was, with no more than a certain proportion of students getting any one grade.

Why should it matter? Well, getting that “C” grade, roughly the equivalent of an “O” Level pass, means the pupils get to go to college. If they only score a “D”, they don’t. So has Gove been sticking his bugle in? He does not deny that grade boundaries have been moved, making a statement of the obvious that “the number of Cs has fallen but the number of Ds has increased”.

And Gove also said “that is the result of the independent judgements made by exam boards entirely free from any political pressure”, which is an interesting form of words for someone not wanting to draw attention to themselves. On the one hand, he says he has no influence, then on the other stresses the need to maintain standards, which sounds rather like the veiled wielding of, well, influence.

One sign that all may not be well for Gove is that his own side is not united behind him. John Redwood has signalled his disquiet, and admitted that he is unsure what examiners are trying to achieve, making this observation: “It is unfair on those taking the exams if they do not know what is expected, or if the standards change between the time they start and the time they finish without them knowing it”.

Redwood goes on “It is particularly unfair if  someone needs a C or higher in a GCSE to go on to further study, and has just failed to get this through some unannounced change in the standard required”. He is not known as “The Vulcan” for nothing. Something less than logical appears to have happened in the marking of GCSE English, and there needs to be a coherent and prompt explanation.

And it will serve all parties best for Michael Gove to come clean about his role.

Murdoch Harry Hypocrisy

Yesterday, the cheaper end of the Fourth Estate was incandescent with rage about the naked photos of Prince Harry – not that he was starkers, although as I pointed out, the righteous mood among the pundits at the Daily Mail tried to spin it that way – but that, while TMZ could go right ahead and publish, Clarence House had had one of those quiet Gentlemen’s words and put the kibosh on publication in the UK.

Oh look out, Sun reporter in bushes ...

By last night it had all become too much for Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, and the paper declared that it would publish and be damned. The result is hardly new news, because anyone who wanted to had already seen the blurry images either on TMZ, or any of the other sites that ran them later. So the question has to be asked as to why they did it.

The official line is that there is a public interest angle, to which I call bullshit. This is, partly at least, a demonstration that the tabloids can do as they please, as Brian Cathcart has pointed out in a characteristically forthright post on the Inforrm Blog. The PCC code of conduct, as he notes, does not allow what the Sun has done, and dredging up Edward VIII in justification is the lamest of excuses.

But there is a hypocrisy about this that goes beyond mere prurience, and that is over the Leveson Inquiry. When TMZ first published, the knee jerk reaction to the lack of UK coverage in some quarters was to assert that Leveson had sent a chill over the land such that all those crusading investigative warriors of the press were no longer able to expose wrongdoing, or at least Harry’s genitals.

Only later was it revealed that there had been a request not to publish from the Royal Family, as there had been over Harry’s presence in Afghanistan. Those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet didn’t have so much of a problem acceding to that one, did they? There was no why-oh-why-fest from the appalling Amanda Platell over that. Keeping schtum over Afghanistan was OK.

And, quite apart from the double standards over their response to the Royal Family, the Fourth Estate has now demonstrated, as if proof were needed, that Leveson has not cowed the hacks and editors one jot. If there was one session at the Last Chance Saloon for them to show that self-regulation works, it was over this story. And the Sun spectacularly blew it – just to flog a few more copies.

As Evan Harris has put it at Hacked Off, the Sun’s actions are “flagrant proof that our national newspapers are incapable of regulating their own affairs”. Far from any idea that Leveson is some kind of irrelevance, or that it is enfeebling the press, the action of the Murdoch attack dogs demonstrates that self regulation does not work, that the Fourth Estate pleases itself what rules it obeys, and moving papers is everything.

The Sun has rolled hypocrisy and own goal into one. The prosecution rests.

Murdoch Is Served (79)

ANDY COULSON AND PARAGRAPH 4.6

There was a general outcry when it was revealed that News International (NI) was paying the legal fees of those who had departed its employ some years ago. But no thought seems to have been given to their having done what they did in the service of the Murdoch empire. So it should also have come as no surprise when Andy Coulson commenced proceedings after NI stopped paying his legal bills.

Now, thanks to the Leveson Inquiry, it is possible to get a handle on the grounds that the former editor of the Screws might have for taking his action, and one look at the Severance Agreement signed by Coulson and Rupe’s faithful retainer Les Hinton, following the former’s departure in the wake of the first phone hacking case, does not bode well for the Murdochs.

Remember at the outset that, had Coulson been dismissed from the editor’s chair, as happened to his contemporary Piers “Morgan” Moron at the Mirror, that would have been that, and he would have had no comeback. But Coulson was not dismissed – he resigned, and the Severance Agreement actually formalises, in some areas, the potential continuation of his relationship with NI.

NI agreed to keep on paying for his medical cover. Coulson got to keep his company car, and held on to his share options. There would be “termination payments”, which are apparently separate from three payments in lieu of notice. The agreeable mood also extended to allowing Coulson to claim expense payments after he left, provided those expenses were incurred while he was working for NI.

But the killer for Rupe and his troops is in Paragraph 4.6: “To the extent that it is lawfully able to do so, the Employer will pay any reasonable professional (including, without limitation, legal and accounting) costs and expenses properly incurred by the Employee after the Termination Date which arise from his having to defend, or appear in, any administrative, regulatory, judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings as a result of his having been Editor of the News of the World” [my emphases].

That looks very much as if, when Coulson resigned, NI agreed to sign on for any future legal costs which he incurred as a result of editing the Screws. So when NI stopped the payments, it is no wonder that Coulson started proceedings. Unless NI finds some way of voiding their Severance Agreement with Coulson, he appears to be in the right this time.

There may well be a further outcry if it is found that NI have to continue paying Coulson’s legal bills. But all of Phonehackgate, and the Tommy Sheridan business, was known about when Les Hinton signed on the dotted line. Coulson did it all for the benefit of NI. The least they could do is own up – and pay up.

Right Turn – Dead End

Late next month the party conference season begins, with the Tories once again choosing Birmingham as their venue. Travellers will thus be wise not to venture inside the M5/M6/M42 ring during early October, or to get off trains at New Street except to change from one to another. But for those who consider themselves properly Conservative, the main event comes earlier.

Because on September 22 – it’s a Saturday – Windsor Conservatives are hosting a Conservative Renewal Conference. In this they have the support of The Freedom Association (TFA) and the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), whose former spinner Susie Squire went on LBC and told Nick Ferrari that the TPA were not Conservatives. Ms Squire was clearly being dishonest.

So, apart from confirming what most folk already knew about the TPA, who is attending this august gathering? Well, the keynote speaker is none other than Michael Ashcroft, long time backer of the Tory Party. So it’s sort of official, then. Fine. Then explain the presence of Roger Scruton, former editor of the Salisbury Review at the time when it had a “repatriation” stance to ethnic minorities.

And if that isn’t enough of a circle to square, there is also the prospect of an appearance by James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, who said on Twitter yesterday “you’re certainly safe to assume I’m not a Tory right now” after he had branded Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud, a “total wanker of a Tory MP” and a “weapons grade tosser”. There’s a party man for you.

Supporting Del Boy will be his pal, the loathsome Toby Young, and also on board is occasional Tory and MEP Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, whose idea of candour is to go on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) and tell whoppers about health care. And the TPA are taking along Lee Rotherham, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, author of their mainly fictitious “report” on the cost to the UK of the ECHR.

And chairing the whole shebang will be Tim Montgomerie of ConHome, whose view of what the Tory Party should be doing is formed – as with rather a lot of the speakers – by talking among the same old jerking circle. If only the party were properly Conservative, they all tell Monty, all would be well and the electorate would love them to bits. Except reality isn’t quite like that.

Long terms of Tory Government have been when those in the centre ground – the swing voters on whom parties depend to get them in power – believed they were doing better (the 1950s) or had more opportunity (the 1980s). The ideological purity of the TPA and their desire to scrap the NHS, remove free education for all, abolish the minimum wage and lower the poverty line, will scare them off in droves.

So perhaps they should rename it the Conservative Suicide Conference, then.

Mandy’s Monumental Royal Moan

[Update at end of post]

So Prince Harry visited Las Vegas. He did the local equivalent of going to the Rub-A-Dub and becoming Elephant’s Trunk And Mozart. He participated in a pool party and after entering into a state of alcoholic derangement played strip billiards. Then someone who was there took photos of him in a state of undress on their mobile phone. Am I bothered? Where’s the news value? Big deal.

Warning: do not approach this woman

Well, for the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, this is a very big deal indeed, because folks who get up to this kind of thing are not The Daily Mail’s Kind Of People. So as Prince Harry is third in line to succeed The Queen (Gawd Bless ‘Er!) there has to be serious and weighty analysis, followed by why-oh-why punditry. And the pundit selected is appalling Glenda Amanda Platell.

Mandy, who will be hoping to renew her season ticket for the sofa on The Andy Marr Show (tm) for another year, says Harry is “Charming, brave and loveable. But I fear he’s a lost little boy”. So in her dreams she fancies him. And she’s got some stern words for him, too: “at the age of 27, he is now a man with the responsibilities of an Army officer”. Those responsibilities, Mandy, include enjoying your R&R.

But she’s serious about this: “If the prince himself doesn’t have the good sense to realise the catastrophic effects of such ‘high jinks’, it was certainly the duty of a courtier or police protection officer to intervene”. Catastrophic effects? What happened, did he chuck someone out the window and miss the swimming pool (very old Las Vegas Bond film joke there, folks)?

And why should anyone “intervene”? Hell’s teeth, do you have to have your sense of humour surgically removed before getting a berth at the Mail? He got pissed and larked about in his hotel room. It’s not as if he’d visited the local gun shop and gone on a rampage, or gone back to his regiment and ordered an airstrike on somewhere sensitive and unstable in the Middle East, is it?

But not to worry, Mandy’s got the answer: “the one blonde who has done most to protect him, apart from his mother, was his only long-term, now ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy”. Yes, Harry needs the steadying influence of a nice girl like, er, one approved by the Daily Mail. Because otherwise, quite apart from all the crap coming out of Dacre’s bevy of Glendas, he’ll turn out like Prince Andrew (allegedly).

And Mandy knows all about what makes Andrew a bad sort: “pursuing women, luxury holidays and golf”. Golf? Christ on a bike, what did golf ever do to make itself such a heinous crime? The inhabitants of the Dacre Bunker need to get a life and lighten up. Young Single Army Officer gets ratarsed while off duty is not news, whatever his identity or status.

Life in Daily Mail land must be excruciatingly boring. C’mon, folks, get over it.

[UPDATE 24 August 1440 hours: just to show that Dacre has sent word to his Glendas on this story, Jan Moir, yes, the one who did the hatchet job on Stephen Gately, has covered the same ground as Amanda Platell with a why-oh-why piece headed "Someone has to drum some sense into the royal party animal before it's too late".

And don't approach this one either

Moir, like Platell, believes that Harry's protection officer should somehow have stopped everyone in the vicinity from using their camera phones, and that because someone used theirs, this meant there was some kind of security risk. No, Jan, that would only have happened if someone had pulled a shooter on the prince, or detonated an explosive device.

Tellingly, even most of the article's commenters can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe this is the point where Paul Dacre's ability to know what his readers want to be told to think began to desert him]

Guido Fawked – Taxi Not For Yeo, But For Boris

The campaign to “get” Tory MP Tim Yeo by the Guido Fawkes blog has already been noted here. What had not been clear, however, was where the Fawkes blog had got its steer: after all, the operation is at present in the hands of intern Alex Wickham, while the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines suns himself at another of his four residences, and the flannelled fool Henry Cole is also on leave.

Cripes chaps, these cabby coves aren't happy!

And the answer is not only not a secret, but also shows how the Fawkes blog slants others’ stories to match its own line, while protecting politicians that Staines idolises. The disquiet among some London cabbies – though how many is unclear – was not primarily over Tim Yeo’s involvement, but the behaviour of occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

In fact, when you look at the material that was used by Wickham to produce the items on the Fawkes blog, it is not difficult to blink and miss the mention of Yeo: it’s all about Bozza. Moreover, it’s equally about pollution and poor air quality – yes, someone concerned about the environment has gone to the one well known blog that specialises in kicking environmentalists.

You think I may be jesting here? Have a look at this press release, on the website of National Taxi Association (NTA), on behalf of a group calling itself “Cabbies Against Boris”. Or another missive from that group carried on the Sack Boris site. Both these pass severely adverse comment on the age limit, which is held to be “improper and unlawful” and will “do nothing to reduce emissions”.

Plenty of attacks there on Bozza. None on Yeo. Now consider this post on the SuperCabby site, authored by Dave Davies and again citing Cabbies Against Boris. After berating Bozza for his closeness to the Murdochs and Barclays, Davies returns to criticism of the age limit for taxis, restating the position that it will do nothing for emissions and claiming that its only purpose is to sell more new cabs.

Then he says this: “Boris implemented the Age Limit after it was proposed by his close Conservative colleague Mr Tim Yeo who is Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. Mr Yeo is also Chairman of Eco City Vehicles who sell the new taxis that drivers are forced to buy at a price of more than £35k”. And that is where the Guido Fawkes blog got its ammunition.

Never mind that the twin clear concerns of Cabbies Against Boris were a suspicion of less than totally ethical behaviour by the Mayor, and the number of deaths each year attributable to poor air quality. Bozza is an heroic figure to Staines and Cole, and so in the retelling he comes out smelling of the proverbial roses. And the environmental argument also gets lost in the Fawkes laundry.

Just so they can go after an MP they don’t like. Another fine mess, once again.

The Henry Jackson Society And Its Mouthpiece

Back in the spotlight today has come a post by one Marko Attila Hoare about his departure from the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), which he had served for seven years in a senior capacity. He described the Society as now being “a mere caricature of its former self” and that it was “No longer ... a centrist, bipartisan think-tank”, having “become an abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge”.

Henry M "Scoop" Jackson

Why should any of this matter? Well, for starters, the HJS has a presence within the House of Commons. And its staffers figure prominently at the right-wing group blog The Commentator, the format of which is similar to the HJS’ own site. And many of those you’ll find at The Commentator are part of that “Conservative Movement” that seeks to wield influence over the Tory Party and its supporters.

And what comes out of The Commentator matches Hoare’s own analysis of the HJS: “churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership of extreme Europhobic British Tories, hardline US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks”. Moreover, added to that list is a tendency to serial dishonesty, as I experienced recently.

I'm with The Commentator cos it gets me on telly!

Linking the HJS and The Commentator are the appallingly humourless Robin Shepherd, HJS “Director of International Affairs” and Raheem Kassam, HJS “Director of Communications and Public Relations”, who over at the Commentator are joined by gofer Dane Vallejo, and their “Political Editor”, the odious and egotistical flannelled fool Henry Cole.

The diet of stories coming out of The Commentator is utterly predictable to those who have read Hoare’s post. Conservatives who rock the boat, as Joe Cooke did in his appearance in a recent BBC documentary, get smeared by a mixture of knocking copy and vicious anonymous sock-puppet comment as a follow up. Anyone not in unequivocal support of the Israeli Government is instantly denounced.

Regimes that do not meet with the ideological approval of that “Conservative Movement” are routinely demonised, so there is plenty of Castro and Chavez bashing on offer. Media organisations that incur the displeasure of Shepherd and his pals are excoriated regularly, so if your bag is BBC and Guardian bashing, The Commentator is the place for you.

And what of that serial dishonesty? Ah yes. When I questioned the Twitter following of The Commentator, there was an anonymous attack piece asserting that I had accused the blog of buying its followers. I had not. The buffoon Cole then asserted that damages could have been won, had I been pursued. This was also blatantly untrue. But it all confirms what Hoare has said about the HJS.

And it shines a little more light into the mindset of that “Conservative Movement”.

Israel And An Iranian Argument

Talk of military action of some kind by the state of Israel against Iran, and in particular the latter’s nuclear facilities, has escalated of late, with what appears on the face of it to be a disagreement between Israel’s Prime Minister and President at the weekend. But the measure of that disagreement is not actually serious. The serious consideration is whether such a move would succeed.

The state of Iran’s nuclear programme is fiercely debated, and whether or not Tehran is about to get its hands on The Bomb is for the most part speculation. That there is a programme, and that it is capable of enriching uranium, is more certain. So any decision to attack by the Israeli Government rests mainly on justification by demonstrating intent – the intent to attack or at least threaten Israel.

That basis for action is not in dispute between PM Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. And the possibility of the action taking place is also not disputed. The only divergence in opinion – apparently exaggerated by the Netanyahu camp – is whether such an action should be taken by Israel acting alone. Peres would rather the USA be at least on-side beforehand.

And that brings us to the potential for success, and the greater potential for fall-out, the latter not just being of the nuclear kind. Israel has always spent a relatively high proportion of its GDP on ensuring its security – which mainly means the IDF, and associated bodies such as the Mossad – and whether the country’s economy could stand a sustained military campaign is uncertain.

Previous military actions, as in 1967 and 1973, were over in a matter of days. They also involved a mainly land based campaign. Iran has no land border with Israel. In fact, Iran does not share a land border even with any of Israel’s neighbours. So any kind of land based action is out of the question. And an air attack would require several hundred miles of overflying other countries’ territory.

So any action, even though the mood in Israel is generally favourable, would be logistically difficult. And then there is the problem of gauging the capability of Iran’s defences, and its ability to strike back. Saddam Hussein managed to send a few ageing Scud missiles, but as we now know, his military capability was more bluff than substance. The Iranians will be a different proposition.

On top of all that is the potential for other players to be dragged into any conflict. What might the Russians and Chinese make of it all? Would the USA continue to make their weapons technology available to a state that did not listen to requests for restraint? Would the USA continue to give the current level of aid to Israel in the light of international condemnation of any action?

There is no “clean strike” or “consequence free” solution here. So think on, Bibi.

Rape And The Rest Of The GOP

[Updates, two so far, at end of post]

The less than stellar prospects for the Republican Party for making any advance at the upcoming elections for Congress and the Presidency were not advanced at the weekend as Rep. Todd Akin, who is challenging Claire McCaskill for the Missouri senate seat, “mis-spoke” (that is, he opened mouth and inserted foot simultaneously) on the subject of rape and abortion.

Todd Akin? C'mon guys, I don't agree with him, not since the weekend, anyhow

Asked if women who get pregnant due to rape should have the option of abortion, he replied “what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child”.

Quite apart from somehow not getting his facts right, the use of the term “legitimate rape” was most unfortunate, the use coming because there has been an attempt (see below) to push the idea that a defined “forcible rape” is somehow different to other forms. Akin has been widely condemned and with him as the candidate the Missouri race looks to be going from a possible win to a certain loss.

So far, so bad for the GOP, but then the thought entered elsewhere that Akin’s stance on the issue of rape and abortion is no different to that of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Ryan was an original co-sponsor of the HR3 bill, introduced in the House of Representatives after the 2010 mid-term elections, which tried to redefine “rape” and introduce the idea of “forcible rape”.

Ryan also sponsored the Personhood idea of “no exemptions for rape from the criminalisation of abortion”. For the whole of the USA. Ryan also sponsored a federal version of the Virginia “forced ultrasound” legislation. This bill had no exemptions for rape or incest. The “forced ultrasound” bill is thought to be what finished Governor Bob McDonnell’s chances of becoming Mitt Romney’s running mate.

But Romney has instead picked Paul Ryan, whose stance is essentially identical to McDonnell’s. And in both cases, they subscribe to the idea that rape victims should be forced to carry pregnancies to term, because, well, getting pregnant through rape doesn’t really happen (well, not in GOP land, it doesn’t). If Akin is a liability in the Missouri senate race, what about Ryan in the Presidential one?

Well, what the Romney and Ryan ticket is now doing, in distancing itself from Todd Akin, is also distancing itself from the views its Veep nominee held, oh, just before last weekend. And that campaign is telling the press that it should ignore those “old” views. But they’re the views of Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, Rep. Rand Paul, and Sarah Palin. Now the Romney campaign is trying to wish them away.

Anyone still want to put money on a Romney victory in November? Be my guest.

[UPDATE1 22 August 1035 hours: after the storm comes the spin, with the Telegraph's Tim Stanley (who you can tell as he's a doctor) putting on a priceless turn for the gullible. "Todd Akin doesn't speak for Romney, Ryan or any other conservative on rape" he declares, blissfully unaware that the background is already out there.

Perhaps Dr Stanley can explain how Paul Ryan came to be an original co-sponsor of the HR3 bill, a sponsor of the Personhood definition which has always lost in any vote to which it has been put, and that he sponsored a federal version of the Virginia "forced ultrasound" legislation (see above for details and links).

As I already pointed out, Akin's views are no different to those espoused by both Ryan and Romney before the furore hit at the weekend. It will take a lot more than a bit of spin at the Tel to stop this being a major problem for the GOP come November]

[UPDATE2 22 August 1840 hours: the HuffPo has noted that Paul Ryan has been trying to separate himself from his previous co-sponsorship with Todd Aiken. Sabrina Siddiqui's piece tells that "Ryan ... tried to distance himself from a bill he co-sponsored with Aiken to introduce language around 'forcible rape' into prior legislation, in order to limit federal funding on abortions for rape victims".

Ryan asserted "Rape is rape. Period. End of story". But that assertion contradicts his previous stance, and Democrats have been quick to exploit the disconnect. Expect much more of this as the Convention season approaches - and beyond]

Guido Fawked – Taxi To Crewe

[Update at end of post]

Alex Wickham, left to produce the Guido Fawkes blog alone as the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines suns himself at his French retreat and the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole also imposes his presence on the unfortunate French, must have thought he was on a winner last week when he chose to continue the blog’s series of attacks on Tory MP Tim “Shagger” Yeo.

Nah, the intern did it. I was pissed, shit, no, I mean on the bottle, oh bollocks, no, I mean holiday. Yeah, I was on holiday getting pissed, oh shit no, I meant relaxed. By getting pissed. Oh sod it

Sadly, poor Alex did not tell the blog’s adoring readers the whole story as he suggested that Yeo was about to make a shedload of the folding stuff as chairman of a company called EcoCity Vehicles (ECV). This is a distributorship which has the rights to sell an adapted version of the Mercedes Vito, the most important part of the adaptation being compliance with the turning circle rules, as a London taxi.

The Fawkes blog does use the term “compete”, but doesn’t actually tell its readers what that competition may be. Fortunately, we in Crewe get a weekly free paper, which goes by a name hated by the Fawkes folks – the Guardian – which has revealed that the capital’s cabbies not only have an alternative to the Vito, but a rather more practical and likely less expensive one.

Click for full size version

How so? Well, here in Crewe there is a company called Voyager MPV, which adapts people carrier designs for use as taxis (you can see their products on the taxi rank outside the railway station). They have been working on the Nissan NV200, which they have now made compliant with the turning circle rule, and so are gearing up to offer this product as a replacement London cab.

The Crewe built cab meets the emissions standards that the Fawkes blog has been grumbling about, it even features a metre square clear roof so that punters can get a better view of all those nice new skyscrapers, and there has been a glowing reference from Bozza himself. Export orders to the USA and even Japan look to be in the offing. Voyager MPV also sells Mercedes taxis.

Not that you will read any of this on the Guido Fawkes blog, where the introduction of low emission taxis is being spun purely as an attack on Yeo, with the deliberate suggestion that those lower emissions aren’t really necessary. That the Capital’s air quality more often than not is unacceptably poor does not enter, which figures for something run by a foreign citizen with two homes outside the UK.

So remember: next time you read anything on the Fawkes blog, you’ll know you aren’t getting the full story, and it’s slanted and spun to suit their agenda – just like the Murdoch Sun and the empire of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, two media figures that Paul Staines reveres. Now you know why.

Another fine mess, once again.

[UPDATE 1840 hours: the Fawkes blog has now run another attack on Yeo, making the ridiculous suggestion that ECV's CEO Peter da Costa somehow had a hand in the ruling that London will not licence taxis that are over 15 years old, from this year. How can he be? He's not part of any legislature. The assertion is complete tripe. It's down to their pal Bozza.

And the photo used of da Costa was published in the Telegraph back in February 2010. It has been in the public domain for at least two and a half years. And the Mercedes Vito adaptation has been available since 2008, so the idea that Yeo is somehow now trying to swing things their way, as the vehicles already have a 30% market share, is crackers.

On the other hand, ignoring the market presence of Nissan is also not a good move by the Fawkes folks: this manufacturer has a very good name among London's cabbies, having produced the 2.7 litre diesel engine that has powered thousands of them. This power unit was described by the General Secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association as "one of the greatest engines ever put in a cab".

So the Voyager MPV Nissan NV200 taxi - which also has sliding doors, so no swinging and striking passers-by - will be a significant player in the capital. And that benefits Tim Yeo by not one penny.

So what is this "Taxi for Tim Yeo" that the Fawkes blog talks of? He's not a minister or holder of any other Government office, and the only objection to his chairing the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee has come otherwise from the likes of James "saviour of Western civilisation" Delingpole. The Fawkes blog story is so full of holes as to be laughable. Another fine mess, once again]

TPA – Petrol Price Porkie

[Update at end of post]

Just as I was suggesting yesterday that the dubiously talented convocation of non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) might be scraping the barrel in their pursuit of alleged Government waste, they launch an all-new, all singing and dancing “campaign”. In association with the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), the TPA has brought forth a fuel tax initiative.

More guff from Tufton Street

And so important is this “campaign” that head non-job holder Matthew Sinclair himself has seen fit to make a statement about it, and point up all the “Fuel Tax Stands” that are being displayed by retailers from today. He quotes freely from the TPA glossary, with words such as “excessive” and “unfair”. But, before the Fourth Estate starts up, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here.

One, the figures for motoring taxes that Sinclair and his pals quote are not new: the numbers he quotes are from January last year, and are contained in a TPA “Research Note” called Excessive Motoring Taxes [.pdf]. And two, costs such as that of congestion are waved away in a sea of waffle, and many other costs are ignored altogether, skewing the result in the TPA’s favour.

Apart from congestion, costs of traffic accidents, and police and court costs, are ignored by the TPA. Factoring all those in results not in an excess of taxation over costs of £18 billion, but a shortfall of almost £40 billion. And that brings us to the tax component of the forecourt price of petrol, which the TPA very prominently shows to be around 60% of the total.

This is held by the TPA to be “paid straight to the Exchequer”, as if the VAT you pay on a sit down meal or a swift pint at the local takes some kind of more leisurely route. But there is, this time round, no mention of thought that some of that taxation might be going to provide motorists with a public transport alternative, nor of course that it might also cover some of that shortfall (see above).

Sinclair says that motorists – and before someone suggests otherwise, that includes me, folks – “deserve a cut in ... taxes”. But his only remedy for the shortfall is to dismantle the NHS, slash welfare, remove public transport subsidies, abolish the minimum wage, and reduce public sector pay and pensions until the costs meet with his ideological approval.

And the PRA chairman has let the cat out of the bag in his quote for the TPA, telling that the tax take from forecourts is of the region of £30 billion a year. That means it doesn’t make up for the shortfall in revenue which I calculated in response to the TPA’s “Research Note” of January last year. So, far from being excessive, if you factor in all the costs of motoring, it’s nothing like.

Something to think about when you’re queuing for the forecourt checkout.

[UPDATE 22 August 1010 hours: the press coverage has been less than total today, although the Sun has claimed an "Exclusive", which is a bit rich, considering the TPA published it all yesterday. Political Editor Tom Newton Dunn, no less, has lent his by-line to a piece titled "Fuelish Mistake", which suggests that motorists are unaware how much of their fuel bill goes in tax, by finding a significant sample of, er, three of them.

And the Express doesn't even mention the TPA. Under the headline "Now Garages Sign Up For A Cut At Pumps", it describes the PRA chairman as a "Garages Chief". Maybe it was a rush job cribbed from the Sun's website. You wouldn't put that past the Desmond press.

No trace of the "campaign" is yet visible at the Mail. So another not very enthusiastic response to all that TPA expenditure of time and someone else's money. If the group were a Government department, they'd be clamouring to have it closed down]

TPA – Parish Pump Perversity

The so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), that Astroturf lobby group that dishonestly claims to represent the 99.9% of taxpayers who do not subscribe to it, needs to keep its expensive offices and equally expensive staff occupied, and so, in pursuit of the ever decreasing circle of supposed waste, they are now reduced to going after and demonising parish councils.

More bore from the second floor

This duty has been allocated to Chris Daniel, whose sole information source is a report from the Audit Commission [.pdf], that well known quango that the TPA wants to have wound up. But, by the happiest of coincidences, the TPA has no problem using its services in the meantime. So are we talking significant amounts of taxpayers’ money here?

Well, no we’re not: of the fourteen bodies that have not provided sufficient information to obtain an audit opinion for the past three years, four are parish meetings (that means they’re very small indeed) and the rest appear to represent very few people. The thought enters that none of these bodies has a budget even approaching £10,000 a year.

In fact, of the just under 9,500 parish councils in England, 4,097 have a budget of less than £10k, with 6,774 having a budget of less than £50k (that latter figure is around 70% of them). And the Audit Commission is happy with around 94% of those. It should be signally obvious to anyone perusing the figures that the scope for significant waste, and possibility of the same, is vanishingly small.

Where the Audit Commission is expressing concern, what it is not saying – TPA people take note – is that there is any suggestion of wrongdoing, except in the way that records are kept and information presented. Where the Commission’s opinion is qualified, it means that there has been a shortcoming in that area. It is not the amounts of money that cause the concern, but the processes and procedures.

That the TPA appears to believe that it has uncovered something significant should, however, not surprise anyone familiar with Chris Daniel’s work. This has, after all, included Trade Union funding, an area where the TPA has been creatively rewriting history to suggest that taxpayers are subsidising strikes, demonstrations and meetings when they are not.

And if I were one of those overmonied TPA backers, I might just want to see something rather more convincing than resorting to picking over whether a parish meeting somewhere in rural Lincolnshire had correctly recorded the purchase of a 80 pack of Asda Smart Price tea bags eighteen months ago, or how much a local joiner was paid to patch up the gate at the local village hall last winter.

Because that is the level we’re talking about. Not that the TPA are telling you.

Can I Exchange This Policy Please?

[Update at end of post]

Young Dave’s judgment hasn’t always been as jolly good as Tory Party spinners might have you believe: quite apart from the suggestion that he jinxed a number of Team GB during the recent Olympic Games, he’s also not displayed the soundest of touches when it comes to giving his approval to think tanks. Some time ago, he let it be known that his favourite among these was Policy Exchange.

New affordable social housing shock horror

At the time, this may not have seemed a controversial move, and in any case, the group had at one time been chaired by the reliably conservative “Oiky” Gove. But then came a “report” by Tim Leunig asserting that regeneration out in those ghastly northern provinces had failed, and that the hoi polloi should be moved forthwith to somewhere convenient for London.

Cameron very quickly realised that Policy Exchange was not merely a repository for the totally batshit, but also a proverbial hot brick of a liability, and swiftly dropped it. At this point the thought might have entered the supposedly massive and intellectually superior heads of those at the organisation that a swift tacking away from the batshit towards the sensible might be in order.

But that thought would have been misplaced, because today has brought yet another excursion into the territory of the terminally batshit with another “report”, this one titled “Ending Expensive Social Tenancies” [.pdf]. This holds, roughly, that social housing in “expensive” areas should be flogged off to those bearing lots of the folding stuff and the occupants sent somewhere cheaper.

The economic rationale behind the “report” is that the money garnered by thus flogging off the social housing stock could then be used to buy lots more new social housing in those cheaper areas, thus kickstarting a housebuilding boom. It all looks so simple – too simple, in fact. Quite apart from the thought that this is gerrymandering and ghetto creating, there are other economic considerations.

If you clear the less well off from “expensive” areas, like, oh I dunno, all of Greater London, you also remove many of those who perform less well paid work there. So if businesses can’t get labour at the current rate, they either pay more and have to increase their prices, or they cease trading. So the Loadsamoneys left in their reassuringly expensive ghetto have to pay more and get less.

Of course, the less well off that got dumped out of town could be transported in every day to carry on doing that less well paid work, but the cost of commuting will also ultimately drive up prices – and that assumes the rail and road networks can cope with the additional demand. So while the Policy Exchange swings make money, the roundabouts elsewhere lose it in shedloads.

And thus reality intruded on the fantasy world of Policy Exchange.

[UPDATE 1245 hours: the Policy Exchange recommendation has been welcomed by Housing Minister Grant Shapps, who stated "It is blindingly obvious. And only a perverse kind of leftwing dogma that appears indifferent to the suffering of those languishing on record waiting lists prevents this kind of common sense from prevailing".

The common sense advocated by Shapps somehow manages not to notice the obvious shortcomings in this idea (see above), and also fails to explain how he can be available for comment when he is making so many individual decisions on who to follow or unfollow on Twitter. Yesterday, for example, he unfollowed a whopping 1,310 accounts.

So Grant Shapps is not only being witless and selective with his facts, but he is also able to stick two fingers up at something so troubling and trivial as the space-time continuum. He is a truly exceptional individual]

Glenda Hates Looking In The Mirror

The Mail’s collection of Glendas does not attract much comment from this blog, and that is for one very good reason: much of their conduct is either covered more than adequately elsewhere – pace Jan Moir – or their behaviour is so ridiculous to be beyond parody, which brings us to the self-satirising Liz Jones, who talks to the animals, many of which would rather she desist and find something useful to do.

What do you think of it so far?

“The Stasi paid for the thought police, but trolls do it for free” carps Ms Jones’ headline, which is intended to warn Mail readers of the evils of Twitter, where someone has been terribly rotten to poor Jeremy Clarkson about the death of his pet dog. Someone else was equally rotten to Ms Jones about her pet cat. There can be only one conclusion, and that is that Twitter is full of evil spirits. Or something.

Now, I hate to bring bad news for dear Liz and her idyllic Exmoor location, together with its menagerie and supreme isolation, but I have some issues with the logic underpinning her proposition. Jezza might not like folks making fun of his Labrador shuffling off, but I suspect significant numbers around the West Midlands weren’t too impressed when he joked about Rover closing, with thousands losing their jobs.

And if you insist – as Ms Jones does, not merely ad infinitum but frequently ad nauseam, on parading the minutiae of your life and relationships before the public – then you are by definition inviting them to comment. And the more you whine on at that same public, the more likely it is that their response will be of a singularly negative character. Put simply, you’re asking for it.

You’re also asking for it if you can’t be bothered to do your research (an all too frequent failing at the Dacre empire). So when Liz whines “When I was on the Somali-Kenyan border, working on a story on the famine, the photographer assigned to my story told me someone was pretending to be me, and was tweeting about how awful it was that my Gucci luggage was getting dusty” she misses one detail.

And that is that the “LizJonesSomalia” spoof Twitter account raised around £15,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s East Africa Crisis Appeal. What did you do for the famine, Liz, apart from inspire the creator of the @DMReporter Twitter feed to show the world just how ridiculous it was that someone so appallingly egotistical  and consumption obsessed was being sent to report on a famine?

If you don’t want folks to comment on what you’re up to, don’t keep banging on about beauty treatments, shopping, more shopping, even more shopping, your relationships, your lack of relationships, other people’s relationships, your jealousy of other people’s relationships, dieting, eating, dieting and eating, complaining, complaining about complaining, saying “look at me”, and all the rest.

Shove enough crap into Twitter and some will come back at you. Deal with it.

Quiet Man Sprays On The Beeb

[Update at end of post]

Politicians whingeing about the treatment they get from across the media are not news. Nor are politicians whingeing about the BBC. They all complain: Tories allege left bias, Labour allege right bias, Lib Dems allege they’re not being taken seriously, and UKIP just allege, to be on the safe side. But now a Coalition Minister has spat out his dummy at the Corporation big time.

Iain Duncan Smith, formerly known as the “Quiet Man”, and whose occasional loss of voice caused Private Eye to nickname him “Iain Duncan Cough”, has suffered a meltdown of Fukushima Dai-Ichi proportions over the reporting of BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders at the time of the release of the latest unemployment figures. He says the Beeb has been “carping and moaning”.

So far, so prosaic, but in Duncan Smith’s complaint to Helen Boaden, the Corporation’s head of news, he has apparently resorted to some distinctly unparliamentary language in asserting that Ms Flanders was “peeing all over British industry”. Whether his language, as with that of Lyndon Johnson, had to be put through the laundry for public consumption is not known.

Duncan Smith is, as is any politician or indeed any citizen, entitled to take issue with the Corporation over its output. Where he appears to have a problem is understanding that there is a difference between the news that he, his advisors (something I will return to later) and other like minded politicians would like to hear, and the news that gives viewers and readers the full picture of what is going on.

When the unemployment numbers were released, there was – and not just at the BBC – some consternation as to how they could have gone down when the economy had been contracting. Explaining this was part of Ms Flanders’ job, so she consulted widely and gave viewers different explanations and points of view. Had she not done so, others would have complained about selective reporting.

Why that should deserve being accused of aligning the Corporation not just with the Labour Party, but directly with Tory hate figure “Auguste” Balls, is to some observers merely symptomatic of an increasing paranoia on the right, where the idea is taking hold that not only the Beeb, but also the Civil Service, is out to get them. And that may well, with Duncan Smith, come back to those advisors.

Following the 2010 General Election, his Department of Work and Pensions awarded a Special Advisor role to one Susie Squire, former spinner for the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA). So the Minister is constantly being given a picture of the world as the TPA sees it, along with what gives every impression of being a diet of dodgy figures. In the circumstances, his losing it with Ms Flanders is inevitable.

And the further inevitability is that it will get him precisely nowhere.

[UPDATE 20 August 1220 hours: just to show how on the ball they are, the Guido Fawkes blog has featured the complaint made by Duncan Smith - a day after Zelo Street. Not that it's a weekday blog that pretends to be a seven day operation, of course. I mean, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines took a break from his Wikipedia edit war yesterday to actually post something.

Sadly, that was a zero credibility item on a fantasy Tory/UKIP coalition, the kind of thing that those on the right dream of, but those of us who reside in The Real World know is tosh. And all that the item on the Duncan Smith complaint is doing is recycling old news with an added slant - with lots of nudge-nudgery and a photo of Stephanie Flanders, because she's on the telly, and the Fawkes blog isn't.

Someone needs to tell Staines and his pals that bias and talent are two different things. Another fine mess]

Top Six – August 19

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I’ve got to go into town later. So there.

6 Murdoch Is Served (78) Latest in the series on Phonehackgate begun in 2009 notes that thirteen former Murdoch staffers and hangers-on will be reunited next month at Southwark Crown Court. The only ones missing, to no surprise at all, will be Rupe and Junior. There’s loyalty for you.

5 Grant Shapps – Time To Come Clean As yet more evidence shows that the Housing Minister could not possibly have made the decision to follow or unfollow hundreds of Twitter accounts in a single day – which he claims to have done – the question has to be asked: when’s he going to admit it?

4 That’s Enough Olympic Right-Wingery After the barrage of ranting from the right, I finally lost patience with them and had to put them straight. Contains forthrightly expressed opinions which may displease purveyors of Miserable Gittery.

3 Virgin On The Ridiculous With First The Government handed one very important rail franchise to First Group, whose aggressive attitude to their customers, and less than stellar service elsewhere, are considered here, as well as the history of broken promises made by franchise winners.

2 Tabloid Troll? Tabloid Scum, More Like The behaviour of one Dennis Rice, former tabloid hack and now washed-up freelance, which involves smearing and abusing his targets while also physically threatening them, was given both barrels. He squealed loud and long. So there has been more use of the e-cattle prod since.

1 Guido Fawked – Caught In The Wiki Edit Act The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines was caught editing his own Wikipedia entry. Twice. He claimed to have been invited to do it. This did not sit well with the guidelines which discourage such practices, and indeed, some incidents he is sensitive about were massaged over or removed. Staines has since had to devote much of his French Leave to a subsequent edit war which resulted in the entry being locked. Another fine mess.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!

Dennis Rice – An Open Letter

Hello Dennis. You aren’t happy about what I posted yesterday? That’s most unfortunate, but it’s no excuse for your going off on one, saying “Tim Fenton, another blogger who also lies and lies on daily basis”. Show me. You can’t. And, as the man said, there’s more: “According to Fenton last week married Miss Mensch was having an improper relationship with a blogger who supported her”.

No direction home for Dennis Rice

According to me, Dennis, there was no assertion or even suggestion that Ms Mensch (we’re not at the Daily Mail now) or any other MP was having an improper relationship with anyone. The only one who matches the description of “no hint of evidence, just smears” is you. And that means you’re in no position to call me or indeed anyone else out for anything.

And another area, Dennis, where you’re batting on a very sticky track is to take to Twitter to threaten and intimidate someone – as you did with Tim Ireland – including implying that you would take your echo chamber along and get someone to film it – and then assert that those you’ve just been threatening have “a coterie of online thugs”. That’s where your congenital stupidity lets you down.

Then there’s that pisspoor blog that you claim “is written by a number of anonymous national newspaper journalists”. But that number is one, Dennis, because it’s you writing it, and you’re not anonymous because Tim Ireland rumbled you. Heck, even the “national newspaper journalists” one is a bit tenuous, given the Mail has run only three pieces with your by-line since the start of last year.

In fact, only one of those articles has appeared this year. Just one. And what was that about, Dennis? It was a lame slice of speculation about the Middleton family and the Party Pieces business. That was the only thing you got your name on in the Mail this year. You really are a busted flush, Dennis. And you know that. That’s why you’ve resorted to name calling in a vain attempt to shut me up.

And that’s not been terribly original or intellectually challenging, has it? “Baldy ... freak ... weirdo ... old fool ... gender issues”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. Oh wait, you’ve saved the real gems for later: “Serbia ... Gaddafi”. Yes, I’m accused of being “Gaddafi Tim”. And how many degrees removed from Stalin or Hitler are we, Dennis? Or is your fantasy land more of a Mao Zedong or Pol Pot one?

I can’t say I’m surprised, given you called McGuffin at Tabloid Watch an “Islamist”. You’re just reading from a list of tabloid demons in the hope that one of the smears will stick. It won’t have any effect, other than to get more folks laughing at you as that supposedly insider blog degenerates into a vehicle for snarking at Tim Ireland, just because he outsmarted you. He didn’t have to try too hard.

You’re washed up and out of credibility, Dennis. But don’t let me stop you digging.

Guido Fawked – Wikipedia Edit War Woes

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, attempted to brush off being caught creatively editing his Wikipedia entry – as I did the other day – but the attention thus garnered has demonstrated to Staines, if demonstration were necessary, that his view of history is not universally accepted. But it has generated some quite exceptional spectator sport.

Yeah, I had to spend all day drinking, shit, no, editing. It was a really long bottle, shit, no, edit, and I got really pissed, bollocks, no, annoyed. I mean, I nearly broke wind, oh shit no, I mean sweat

Following my post and its appearance in an edited form on Liberal Conspiracy – for which my thanks as ever to Sunny Hundal – Staines’ version of history did not survive for long. Late on Thursday – before anyone asks, I was at the excellent Cellar Bar on Chester’s City Road enjoying a chat and the live music from Mercy Louise Birch – someone objected to the Wiki entry reading like a CV.

The next morning, the editing to-and-fro continued, with one comment reading “Paul, you may not cite your own website as a reference, and MessageSpace clients bear no relevance to this page. Please do not undo this or we will be forced to lock the page”, and the same source asserting firmly “NO Paul you are not a factual resource. Just because you say or think it does not mean it has been verified”.

Staines, in fact, seems to have spent a considerable amount of time during yesterday trying in vain to impose his view of history on the Wikipedia community, characteristically threatening at one point to go to law over mention of the London Bridge incident where a camerawoman was knocked over. He is, as I pointed out previously, very sensitive about such matters.

Ultimately, the edit war was brought to a halt as the page was locked pending resolution of disputes over its veracity. But Staines was, by the iron code of The Great Guido, duty bound to spin the whole business as if it were some kind of great victory, and so he took to Twitter to proclaim “Small internet victory as Wikipedia blocks people”. I will leave others to decide on the accuracy of that one.

The Staines rewriting of history leaves many questions unanswered: his flirting with the BNP while a student, his styling of his name in a double-barrelled fashion, the detail of his descent into bankruptcy, the frequently dishonest nature of the content at the Guido Fawkes blog and the sexist and misogynist nature of much of that content, and of course the altercation at London Bridge Station.

Meanwhile, those of us who have been targeted by Staines and/or his deeply unsavoury tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, can look forward to yet more excellent spectator sport – before the inevitable smears and accusations begin, I don’t edit, and never have edited, Wikipedia – until the folks that look after “the free encyclopaedia” have to decide if his entry is worth the candle.

That couldn’t happen to a more deserving bloke. Another fine mess, once again.