Train Toilets Flush Onto Tracks Shock

For those of us who travelled around Europe in the days when all train toilets emptied on to the tracks below, the UK was relatively civilised: the use of a U-bend meant that one needed to be reminded not to flush when stopped at a station. Over the Channel, there may have been a flap to keep the draught at bay, but when you flushed the thing, the track whizzing past could be clearly seen.

Yes, this train's toilets flush on to the tracks

Times change, and across Europe the harmful effects of discharging all that, er, by-product are now well known. Quite apart from dangers to those who have to work on the tracks, studies have shown that the stuff discharged sprays everywhere, including along the coach sides. So when you open those olde-worlde hinged doors, the handle will be covered, however small the amount.

This has suddenly taxed the hacks at Mail Online, where an aghast Matt Chorley told yesterday that “Train firms to be banned from allowing 'utterly disgusting' toilets to flush sewage on to the tracks”, which would be interesting, as the operators, in almost all cases, don’t own the trains from which said sewage is flushed. And we’re told that “Baroness Kramer demands that the 'utterly disgusting' practice ends”.

Well, Susan Kramer was in business long before entering politics, and as a former Citibank staffer should know that waving the proverbial wand and commanding all those flush toilets to vanish would involve a non-trivial amount of money. And this in an industry where commuters regularly find adversely upon the annual hike in their season tickets. So it isn’t going to happen overnight.

Train coaches generally have a lifespan of between 30 and 40 years, with most of those in the crosshairs of the critics, the British Rail Mark 3s used mainly in the InterCity 125 trains, due to be retired before the end of the decade. These, and many other coaches, were not fitted with retention tanks because it cost more money. Some forget that BR was not exactly, er, flush with cash.

On top of all that, the Mail story is not new news, having been, er, aired as the 20th anniversary of the first sell-offs was celebrated last November. Once again Susan Kramer was telling how “disgusting” it all was, joined in an unusual alliance by Bob Crow of the RMT union. And on that occasion there was the additionally dramatic intervention of the Mirror to claim the effluent was being “pumped” out (wrong).

But good to see the Mail is now waking up to the consequences of running the railways for so many years with not very much subsidy. We got what we paid for, right into the 1980s, and what we paid did not stretch to coaches having retention tanks that were cleaned out well away from passengers and operating staff. Funnily enough, the press weren’t too fussed about it then.

Perhaps more hacks travel by rail these days. Pity their bosses don’t, eh?

So Farewell Then Simon Hoggart

The news was shocking to many, as he just kept on working and didn’t talk about it, when it was revealed that Guardian sketchwriter Simon Hoggart, who has passed all too early at the age of just 67, had been battling pancreatic cancer for three and a half years. There was nothing more than a mention in one of his recent Saturday columns. And then he was gone.

Simon Hoggart

Unlike his press gallery contemporaries – the odious Quentin Letts (let’s not) springs to mind – Hoggart did not tailor his view to slavishly follow any paper’s editorial line, but was always of independent thought. As sceptical over climate change as he was on the modern manifestations of what Robin Day memorably called “here today and gone tomorrow politicians”, he was his own man.

So, while he described Pa Broon’s smile “as if the nodding dog in a car was channelling the Joker”, and talked of “Auguste” Balls sounding “like King Lear, raging against the storm that was blowing outside”, he called Tory Nicholas Soames “a vast, florid spectacle, a massive inflatable frontbench spokesman ... They could have floated him over London to bring down the German bombers”.

This ability to satirise all parts of the political spectrum has been lost on some of today’s political observers, such as the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, who have latched on to Hoggart’s dislike of Tony Benn, while managing to miss his clear enjoyment in writing not always complimentary portrayals of their heroine Margaret Thatcher.

Indeed, as the Guardian has pointed out, “Hoggart's world view was shaped by his family roots in the industrial north of England. He knew Thatcher had made necessary reforms but felt she was neither evil witch nor national saviour, merely increasingly mad”. In this I concur and identify with Hoggart, although my love of food and wine is more Aldi and Auchan than it is Waitrose.

When Mrs T passed last year, Hoggart wrote “What seems to have been left out of all the obsequies is the fact that, by the end, she was going mad. I wrote as much while she was still prime minister and heard it from several of her colleagues. Neither the evil witch nor the saviour- of-our-great-nation brigades could cope with that because it challenged their certainties”.

He also noted her tendency to inadvertent double entendre, as when, on a visit to the Falkands, “she was shown a huge field gun, manned by a single squaddie. She admired the weapon and the soldier asked if she would like to fire a round ... ‘Goodness!’ she replied, ‘won't it jerk me off?’”. No politician was safe from the Hoggart talent for reliable recall and good humour.

That is why we will miss him, more than many of us will know.

Boris Mentions The War

In a move which shows that Michael “Oiky” Gove’s attempt to politicise the First World War last week was neither accident nor one-off, London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has used his regular “chicken feed” generating column for the Maily Telegraph to pile in against Gove’s strawman rogues’ gallery of fantasy rotten lefties who say things he doesn’t agree with.

“Germany started the Great War, but the Left can’t bear to say so” he opines, following it up with “In this centennial year, it’s more important than ever that we treat the truth with respect”, which suggests that the headline is a factual statement, which it is not. “I just can’t stand the intellectual dishonesty of the Left” says Bozza. As opposed to his own kind of dishonesty, no doubt.

That dishonesty is proclaimed at the outset: “the First World War – in all its murderous horror – was overwhelmingly the result of German expansionism and aggression”. Bullshit. It was mostly down to a combination of two things: first and foremost, the alliances which effectively obliged countries to defend others, resulting in two opposing power blocs.

And the second thing was the consequence of decades during which transport networks, mainly railways, had been built up across Europe, facilitating the mobilisation of troops and munitions. Once the trains started to run, and armies were moved as a prelude to action, war became inevitable. And once the systems of trenches were dug, this enabled their virtual permanence.

In order to service the trenches and their occupants, narrow gauge railway networks sprang up behind the lines, making swift reinforcement of men and munitions easy and effective. So when a “softening-up” artillery bombardment was undertaken in advance of an attack – as at the Somme in 1916 – the trenches could be evacuated and re-occupied quickly in order to minimise casualties and greet attackers.

Generals on both sides – Douglas Haig was no less inept than his opposite numbers across no-man’s land – failed to come to terms with this reality. And it was this that brought much of the killing. That is not a leftist proposition: it is a factual statement. Nor is it a leftist proposition that Germany was not alone in causing the whole ghastly business to kick off in the first place, as witness the chain of events.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia joined in as it was allied to Serbia. Germany also joined in, as it was allied to Austria-Hungary. In order to neutralise French intervention, Germany also declared war on France. The French reciprocated and we joined in, being allied to both France and Russia. The Ottoman Empire joined in, being allied to Austria-Hungary. And so it escalated.

This is not difficult to understand. Unless you are Boris Johnson or Michael Gove.

Farage Says Enoch Was Right

Nigel “Thirsty” Farage appeared before the inquisition of Dermot Murnaghan on Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) yesterday morning, when he was read extracts from a speech with which he appeared to agree. To his apparent surprise, that speech was the one given in Birmingham on 20th April 1968 by one John Enoch Powell, which is more usually called the “Rivers of blood” speech.

Those in the Conservative Party who believe there can be some kind of accommodation with UKIP – that would be, for instance, the loathsome Toby Young – should pay attention to Farage’s agreement: Powell was sacked from the opposition front bench after making that speech, which then Tory leader Ted Heath described unequivocally as “racialist”.

In his speech, Powell claimed to quote from a discussion with one constituent, and a letter from another, but neither could be found by the many reporters who descended on his Wolverhampton constituency in the following weeks. It therefore has to be assumed that Powell had, to a greater or lesser extent, exaggerated the stories or even made them up for effect, which just makes his remarks worse.

His conversation was with a man who told “In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”. Given the clear parallel with slavery, that remark was loaded, as was Powell’s repeated reference not just to immigration, but what he called “re-emigration”, or in other words, forcing immigrants to return to the country from which they came, or somewhere else.

He also railed at the then Government’s proposed legislation to end discrimination – what became the Race Relations Act. For Powell, employers, retailers, publicans and property landlords operating a colour bar – or barring those with an Irish accent – were not a problem. And the language employed to frighten voters with Very Scary Numbers will be all too familiar to many.

“In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants” (for “Commonwealth”, read “black and Asian”) ... “There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London”.

Enoch Powell would have fitted right in with the Express, Mail and Telegraph rabble-rousers. And Nigel Farage has backed the “basic principle” of it, so presumably he’s happy with the discrimination, scaremongering, and downright dishonesty of the exercise. Any Tories that had contemplated an accommodation with UKIP should take a long, hard look at Powell’s words, and think again.

It’s a great pity that most of the press won’t do the same. No surprise there, then.

Gilligan Trousers Ablaze – More HS2 Spin

Despite the HS2 project not being quite as visible over Christmas and the New Year, as sales and weather have relegated it to the inside pages, one hack can be guaranteed to deliver knocking copy: step forward Andrew “transcription error” Gilligan, today proclaiming “HS2: Government ministers sat on critical report by Department for Transport”. And, as the man said, there’s more.

“The case for HS2 has been further undermined after a report is shown to have exaggerated its benefits” readers are told, although it would be more correct to say that one report suggesting there would be an economic boost following HS2 opening has had its conclusions questioned by the authors of another report. Neither report impinges on the business case for HS2.

So what’s the Gilligan deal? We know that a report was produced by KPMG, which contained estimates of the benefits to those areas served by HS2. There was much discussion at the time as to how sound those estimates were. The report Gilligan is trying to paint as a smoking gun merely covers the same ground as those discussions. It does not undermine the business case.

When Gilligan says “the case for HS2 has been further undermined”, then, this is not true, although I’d stop short of playing his usual trick and shouting “liar”. In fact, despite all the verbiage, Gilligan does not actually mention the business case – which has been repeatedly revisited, to demonstrate its soundness – once. And his supporting analysis is shaky.

To try and disprove the assertion that HS2 will be integrated into the existing rail network, he spins “HS2 will not even run to the main rail station in five of the seven major provincial cities it serves”. Seven major provincial cities? Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, and Leeds makes six. And only in the cases of Derby and Nottingham will the HS2 station be out of town.

Then we get carbon emissions. Car and plane journeys are discussed. Gilligan notes that four planeloads are estimated to switch to HS2, then dismisses this with “there are ... few [flights] between London and Leeds or Manchester” Fifteen on a weekday from Manchester, actually. And once again, freight is forgotten: one large cut in emissions will come from moving more of it by rail.

And finally, Gilligan lets his readers know that the critical report that drove the whole article was about a different KPMG study, not the one he cites. But someone commenting on a blog post on the website of a firm that used to do work for the Government on HS2 said something critical, so this is included and elevated to the status of signal importance. Same old Gilligan.

He must be going through trousers at this burn rate, so no change there, then.

UKIP Gets Mail Support – By Accident

It is crystal clear that the Mail does not want to see a Labour Government in the UK in the foreseeable future, if ever. It is equally clear that, should UKIP maintain its poll ratings through to 2015, and keep abstracting support from the Tories at the same rate as today, that is exactly what will happen. So what is the Mail doing to stop that happening? Well, it isn’t – it’s making it more and more certain.

And, with largely faked headlines like “Exposed: Bulgarian fixers tell new arrivals to UK... We will fake documents so you can claim benefits” which is then explained away later in the article with “There is no suggestion that any of these activities involve any improper activity” and “its staff did not suggest anything improper or illegal” the migrant phobia is clearly being deliberately ramped up.

Then readers are assailed with “Now voters turn against EU in record numbers as floodgates open for Romanian and Bulgarian migrants”, giving the result of a poll which gives the result of which the Mail approves. That, by a 50% to 33% margin, those questioned expressed a preference for leaving the EU did not occur to the hacks and editorial staff that this could hurt their preferred Governing party.

Nor does the giving of a platform to Tory MP Mark Reckless to pen such unadulterated claptrap as “The respected think-tank MigrationWatch reckons 50,000 Romanians and Bulgarians will come here in each of the next  five years – that’s a quarter of a million people in total” cause the Mail’s staff to pause for a moment to think that they are effectively shilling for Mil The Younger.

Only when reporting on the desperation within Tory ranks, manifested by the loathsome Toby Young’s futile gesture of setting up a website to encourage UKIP and Tories to co-operate – fat chance, as they detest one another – does the awful truth emerge. “Mr Young claims it would give UKIP leader Nigel Farage and a handful of his candidates a chance of winning seats” is a sham.

Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his pals haven’t managed better than second, even in the one-off by-election contests in which they have done well. The trade-off would be between letting the Tories win, and UKIP nearly win. For that reason, Tobes and anyone else of like mind will get nowhere. The latest opinion poll, in today’s Observer, shows just how the sums stack up for the two parties – or don’t.

UKIP are stuck in the high teens percent, but are clearly abstracting most from the Tories, on 30%, and then the Lib Dems, on 8%. Labour, on what would be a winning 37%, are the least affected by the Farage fringe. And every slice of rabble rousing pap served up by papers like the Mail, which reaches millions of readers in print and online, will just keep those numbers right where they are now.

Northcliffe House might as well fly a “Vote Labour” flag. It’s that simple.

The Mail, Sin And The Devil

Sunday, for those who read the Mail, is still very much the day of the Lord, whatever the heaving car parks at retail venues across the country might suggest. That means anything that might deflect from maintaining the Christian message must be challenged, even if the paper has had to make it up, as happened with the “BBC Turns Its Back On Year Of Our Lord” fantasy rant.

Happily for the Mail On Sunday, today has brought a mainly true story, but with the same outraged faux horror reaction that will raise little more than an occasional “meh” from the readers. “Welby Casts Out ‘Sin’ From Christenings” thunders the banner headline, to the consternation of parents and families who wouldn’t know the text of the ceremony without a cue card.

So what’s the problem? “Centuries-old rite rewritten in 'language of EastEnders' for modern congregation ... Parents and godparents no longer have to ‘repent sins’ and ‘reject devil’ ... New wording is designed to be easier to understand – but critics stunned”. How many critics? Er, two, one of whom is former Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, who is known to be conservative in such matters.

Seriously, does anyone recall the “repent sins” and “reject the devil” parts of the christening service? And what’s the “language of EastEnders” rubbish? Does the new service include “leave it aht”, “shat eet”, “not on my manor”, “I don’t believe I’m hearing this”, or “Is ‘e dahn the pab”? So that’ll be more flannel, then, but a good way of blaming the BBC for it (again).

And the false assumptions are jaw-dropping: “under the divisive reforms, backed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and already being practised in 1,000 parishes, parents and godparents are asked to ‘reject evil, and all its many forms, and all its empty promises’ – with no mention of the devil or sin”. What’s being “divided” by a wording ordinary people can understand?

Does the Mail On Sunday expect to speak in Seventeenth Century English, and that its readership not only has the ability to figure it out, but would carry on buying the paper if it did that? Well, the supporting editorial has the excuse ready: “this sinless, devil-free christening service is not at all the same sort of thing. The whole point of religion is that it is different from the normal world”.

That would be why so much organised religion is losing ground to more secular pursuits. If potential churchgoers are turned off by the stubborn adherence to the kind of language meant to keep the poor and ignorant in line in the age before information and democracy, it will keep losing ground. Justin Welby is, to his credit, trying to make Anglicanism more relevant to his flock.

Not that the Mail On Sunday wants to admit that too readily. No change there, then.

Top Six – January 5

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, there’s business stuff to do later. So there.

6 Gove Great War Strawman Fail Education Secretary Michael “Oiky” Gove tried to reinvent the First World War, including pretending that Douglas Haig was competent. So that’s a fail, then.

5 Liam Fox Flies NHS Bashing Kite The disgraced former minister pretended that the NHS was “wasteful”. That’s another in the tradition of “Shagger” Major saying “of course, British Rail is deeply inefficient”.

4 Boris Silent On Underground Debacle London’s occasional Mayor kept schtum as Bombardier pulled out of an upgrade project for the Sub-Surface Lines. No surprise, as that was £80 million up the wall and no prospect of those “driverless trains” for decades – as he had been told so many times.

3 BBC Today Prog Backlash The guest editorship of P J Harvey was greeted by clearly organised condemnation. That of the former head of MI5 was not. As Private Eye might have asked, I wonder if the two are in any way related? I think we should be told.

2 The Romanians Are Coming – Or Maybe Not Some clearly dishonest stories went the rounds about the coach and plane loads of new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria. The reality was that there were very few of them, and those that turned up were here to work, not claim benefits.

1 Brillo Misses His Troll Award One name not present in the Guardian’s ten worst Twitter trolls was Andrew “Brillo Pad” Neil. Here’s why he was a deserving contender, especially on anything climate change related.

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

Nadine Back In The Mirror

[Update at end of post]

Well, that went well, or rather it didn’t: all the threats and bluster aimed at the Mirror and its staff by Mid Bedfordshire Tory MP (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries have clearly had little effect, as the Daily version of the paper has once again gone after her over getting paid around £4,000 to appear on a “celebrity” version of ITV quiz show The Chase, which was intended to be for her chosen charity.

However, and this is a rather significant however, none of that fee went to the charity, although her winnings, around £1,000, may have (the Mail, which subsequently lifted the original story, claims that this sum was paid over). This may cause some eyebrows to be raised, as many viewers will have assumed that a charity appearance is exclusively that.

In other words, any appearance money would automatically go to charity, whether there were winnings involved or not. Ms Dorries has today been unrepentant: “Unlike Alan Johnson and Diane Abbott, I use outside earnings to subsidise [my] role as an MP and don’t claim personal expenses from [the] tax payer” she asserted on Twitter. And, as Jon Stewart may have said, two things here.

One, “personal expenses” does not extend to those working for her, including one family member, who are paid out of taxpayer funds. Those who followed the earlier Mirror stories may remember that one of her daughters is on the Dorries payroll, and lives rather a long way from Westminster. It was that story that brought the threat to nail reporter Ben Glaze’s undercarriage to the floor.

And there may no longer be any personal Dorries expense claims, but there certainly have been in the past; this has recently passed before the inspection of Unity at Ministry of Truth. The expense claims examined in detail at that blog were the result of an investigation by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which this blog covered at the time.

Moreover, none of this explains away the unnecessary sniping at Johnson and Ms Abbott, merely because both of them represent the Labour Party (Ms Dorries has previous when it comes to slagging off Ms Abbott, which may not be unconnected to the latter’s stance on the pet Dorries issue of abortion). What she has done with the fee from The Chase simply does not look good.

That appears lost on Nadine Dorries. But then, the expense business was treated in a similar way: she was, in her own mind, doing nothing wrong. Well, if those passing comment at the Mirror and Mail websites are indicative of public opinion, that opinion is uniformly adverse. Perhaps this will be another example of initial resistance turning over time into grudging acceptance that she might have been wrong.

Come on Ms Dorries, give some of that fee away. Charity begins at home.

[UPDATE 5 Jannuary 1515 hours: Ben Glaze, the recipient of the threat of actual bodily harm from Nadine Dorries, has been in touch via Twitter to point out that there is another piece on the Tory MP in today's Sunday Mirror.

Glaze has reported that the fragrant Nadine has signed up with ASM Damage, a "talent agency" which includes on its books such luminaries as the Cheeky Girls. They have described her as "one of Westminster's most interesting characters".

The impression might be formed that Ms Dorries was preparing herself for a life outside politics, something which rather a lot of those eligible to vote in the Mid Bedfordshire constituency will wish had happened rather earlier]

CBB – Liz Jones Really Desperate

[Update at end of post]

As the media empire of Richard “Dirty” Desmond prepares to extract as much dosh as it can from another exhumation of the mostly dead format that is Celebrity Big Brother (CBB), one of the housemates stands out like the proverbial sore thumb: step forward the Betty No-Mates of the Mail On Sunday, Liz Jones. Why they asked her is the easy part: why she accepted is not.

What do you think of it so far?

Meanwhile, the Daily Star, official CBB paper, promises readers “CELEBRITY Big Brother is back– and this time, fireworks are set to fly with a gang of boobylicious, gobby housemates”, emphasising the presence of Sam Faiers (who was on TOWIE), Luisa Zissman (ex The Apprentice, so maybe the next Katie Hopkins) and Casey Batchelor, who has an unfeasibly large chest.

Very few people will have heard of them, of course, so there have to be some actual names to make up the numbers, like Jim Davidson (again), Evander Holyfield (did they tell him what was involved?), Ms Jones, and Lionel Blair, so often the butt of innuendo on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (cue the one about his talent for impressions, and that he once pulled off Twelve Angry Men in Just A Minute).

But it’s the acceptance of Liz Jones that may be the most revealing. She was clearly asked because of her unerring ability to piss off anyone within a fifty mile radius of her North And South. But if she’s as well off and contented as readers of the MoS are led to believe, why is she subjecting herself to an open-ended period of regular ritual humiliation, and to the benefit of Dirty Des?

Maybe a mixture of reality and desperation is setting in chez Jones: she has just regaled MoS readers with the news that she has, for once, spent Christmas with a male partner, and the he not only smokes but eats meat. After all the vitriol she poured over Ms Jack Monroe recently, the latter may allow herself a raised eyebrow at Ms Jones’ sudden tolerance of carnivorous human beings.

And in the same article she also told that her dogs have a full-time “dog sitter”, which she will have to open her wallet to pay for. After pouring all that money into the place in the rural south-west, keeping a property near London, and moving her menagerie to North Yorkshire, perhaps the incomings are having difficulty keeping pace with the outgoings, to which two more dogs have just been added.

In that case, it is to be hoped that she’s extracted a suitably significant wedge from Dirty Des’ empire, and mustered her excuses for when she next bumps into the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. It’s fascinating to see how age finally brings some of those resistant to the real world back into its orbit. Hopefully Ms Jones will not tee off the CBB housemates too much before escaping to spend her fee.

And then she’ll be teeing off everyone else. So no change there, then.

[UPDATE 5 January 1710 hours: to show the weird world in which Liz Jones lives, she has told the Daily Star that her difficulties in the Big Brother house will be "people eating meat, people using the bathroom". Er, what?!? Yes, she says, "I'm very OCD". She managed for three days at Glastonbury without taking a pee, which I'd rather not have found out, thanks.

On top of that are the delusions of fame: "I've had a few run-ins with Rihanna and Kate Moss". Both these names may well be looking in and asking "Liz who?" right now. But she wants readers to know that she once interviewed Bruce Willis "who was quite scared of me". And she's looking at CBB "like a really bad holiday at Butlin's".

Where do you start? Some people will do anything for money. And Liz Jones really is one of them]

Don’t Menshn The Snowden Desertions

As the debate over the revelations coming from the trove of material obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden continues, there are signs that those screaming for him, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, David Miranda, and anyone connected with the deeply subversive Guardian to be indicted are losing ground. And one of those screaming the loudest is not happy at the prospect.

Has she got news for us? You jest

Former Tory MP for Corby and East Northants Louise Mensch, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, has reacted badly to the news that the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog have taken on board the wise advice of John Maynard Keynes (“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?”) and backed Snowden.

That the Fawkes folks have unequivocally called Snowden “a hero” should not be lost on anyone: Staines has clearly done his sums and calculated that his mainstream media contacts will not disapprove too strongly. Given that these include the Sun, for which he and his pals contribute a weekly column, plus the Mail and Telegraph, all of which have previously condemned Snowden, this is significant.

Indeed, the Tel has even allowed itself to become a conduit for GCHQ counter-propaganda. But Staines’ tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, also works for the Spectator, owned by the Barclay Brothers, who run the Tel. So there’s another media empire that may be shifting its position. There is good reason to do so: as the Fawkes post points out, the spooks have been behaving very badly.

But lawbreaking and violations of the US Constitution cut no ice with Ms Mensch: “Guido, you misspelled ‘string him up by his knackers, he is a traitor’” ranted the Tory politician who once asserted “Conservative policies deliver liberal ends”. She was also up for a little speculative dishonesty: “where are the damaging stories about any enemy of the US? He has them” she told anyone not yet asleep.

Wibble ... rant ... listen to ME everyone!

Anything put forward which she finds inconvenient is dismissed as “spin”, for which she claims Staines and his pals have fallen (not an easy one to stand up, as the Fawkes rabble may well spin, but also know how to spot it). Their comment on the Guardian’s editor: “it was disgraceful to hear Rusbridger’s patriotism questioned by a Select Committee over him publishing the Snowden story” should put her straight.

The hard truth which Louise Mensch cannot, or will not, take on board is that, as more and more revelations on the spooks’ overreach emerge, less of the media wants to see Snowden, or anyone who has run the material he obtained, indicted. As Staines points out, even Greta van Susteren, a host on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) has called out the NSA for telling whoppers.

Louise Mensch made the wrong call. And she’s too stupid to take Keynes’ advice.

Thatcher Fans Foiled By Archives

There have been a number of issues on which those holding the memory of Margaret Thatcher in high regard have claimed that she acted in a way that justifies their adulation. But the release of information from the National Archive under the 30-year rule has shown not only that some of the fan club’s assumptions were wrong, but that her Government was on occasion close to panic.

With the passing of Nelson Mandela still in many minds, and the claims of many on the right that Mrs T fought for his release in the 1980s, it might not be appreciated on the right when the Maily Telegraph, of all papers, tells “Margaret Thatcher barely mentioned Nelson Mandela in South Africa talks” in 1985, and when she did, obtained no joy from then South African PM P W Botha.

Nor will her supporters take any comfort from the news that her Government was warned beforehand that there might be violence at a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy, and that after WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed by someone within that embassy, “accepted no one would ever be charged ... and the government would have to ‘allow a murderer to go free’”.

But it is over the 1984-5 miners’ strike that eyebrows will be most readily raised, as we now discover that, despite denials from the then National Coal Board (NCB) and Government, there really was a “hit list” of pits which were to be closed, and the numbers involved were, if anything, even higher than those claimed by then National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill.

Scargill had claimed that there were 70 pits earmarked for closure: cabinet papers from 1984 reveal a plan to close 75. A memo not copied outside a small group of ministers told that “Mr MacGregor [NCB Chairman] had it in mind over the three years 1983-85 that a further 75 pits would be closed... There should be no closure list, but a pit-by-pit procedure”. So Scargill was right.

And government paranoia is laid bare: “the government thought miners might get financial support from Moscow or eastern Europe, and was trying to prevent the funds getting through. Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong wrote: ‘If a representative of the NUM could be detected entering this country with a suitcase full of banknotes, it might be possible for him to be stopped and searched at customs’”.

On top of that, a dock strike induced barely disguised panic, which enveloped even Norman Tebbit, supposedly unswerving Thatcher loyalist. There was even talk of calling in the armed forces to deliver coal – despite the power stations having reserves to last them until Autumn 1985. So much falsehood and misinformation has been peddled in the intervening years, with too many being taken in by it.

It is good to finally get the facts. But don’t expect anyone on the right to say sorry.

Gove Great War Strawman Fail

Michael “Oiky” Gove has been given houseroom by the Daily Mail – not that the proud organ of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre supports the Tory Party, you understand – to erect the most magnificent of strawmen, as he thunders “Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?” on the subject of The Great War. He asserts “history is enjoying a renaissance in Britain”. But what kind of history?

Yes, your strawman

We don’t have to wait long to find out: “The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths”. Really?

So, unthinking people of the UK, you’ve all been looking at World War 1 through just those prisms, yes? Well, no: and no amount of revisionism and excuse-making will change the sad facts. This was the last war where the ruling classes instructed the lower orders to toddle off and do their dirty work for them. And our supposedly greatest commander, Douglas Haig, was appallingly incompetent.

“Douglas Haig, held up as a crude butcher, has been seen in a new light thanks to Professor Gary Sheffield, of Wolverhampton University, who depicts him as a patriotic leader grappling honestly with the new complexities of industrial warfare”. And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. Haig’s portrayal of warfare as a game of draughts (checkers if you like) is well known.

He advanced this idea to David Lloyd George, telling of trading off draughts one for another, but starting with more of them, and thus winning. The sheer callousness of Haig’s explanation for his tactics led Lloyd George to swear that he could not look again at a checkerboard without wincing at the thought of lives being wasted. And Haig could have learned about “industrial warfare” rather faster than he did.

It should have taken no longer than one cavalry charge, or advance of infantry, against nests of machine guns, to teach Haig the lesson he took so long to grasp. It is also a cheap and crude shot for Gove to bluster “Britain’s role in the world has also been marked by nobility and courage” and then pretend that the films and TV series he cites deride or question that in any way.

Michael Gove wants to portray his own world of binary right and wrong, where the dastardly Boche were to blame and the plucky Allies resisted and overcame them. The reality, a war that need never have happened had all our leaders stopped for a moment and engaged brain beforehand, is lost to him. And it will not be brought back by clinging onto his own convenient version of history.

World War 1 was summed up in four words by Harry Patch: It Wasn’t Worth It.

Toby Young Bullshits On Poverty

Taking a day off from cheering on the every move of his hero Michael “Oiky” Gove, the loathsome Toby Young has hit on another morale-boosting wheeze for all those out there on the right who share the same unique view of the world as Himself Personally Now, and that is to claim that capitalism is better than any other system because it has made such a significant impact on poverty.

Lay off the collapso before writing, eh?

To this end, he has sought solace from across the North Atlantic, and particularly the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which sounds relatively benign until you realise that it is just another neocon front which numbers among its alumni such centrist and inclusive people as Paul Wolfowitz, Newt Gingrich, and John “Wiggy” Bolton. Its favoured speakers include “Dick” Cheney.

This does not deter Tobes, although for some reason he fails to mention any of the above-named. “The chart that proves capitalism is better than socialism” he announces, continuing by quoting Mark J Perry: “one of the most remarkable achievements in human history – the 80 per cent reduction in world poverty in only 36 years”. Your bullshit detector may now be sounding.

And there is a very good reason for that sounding off: that reduction in poverty is “from 26.8 per cent of the world’s population living on $1 or less (in 1987 dollars) in 1970 to only 5.4 per cent in 2006”. The thought enters that those living with the benefit of ample incomes pretending that getting more than one 1987 US Dollar a day lifts you out of poverty is just a teensy bit incongruous.

That is certainly not how poverty is defined in the UK, or in the wider EU. The European Commission definition begins thus: “People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live”. That, it is screamingly obvious, means more than $1 a day.

What the AEI proves is that, providing you set the bar low enough, you can pretend that poverty has been all but eradicated, whereas it has not. In the UK, for instance, by the definition of poverty generally accepted, around 20% of the population are considered to be in poverty. The national poverty rate in the USA, using a different definition, was around 15% last year.

To no surprise at all, these figures are rather higher than the AEI and Tobes would have us believe. Even in third world countries, one 1987 US Dollar a day will most likely not provide food, shelter, clothing, clean water, education and transportation. So before Toby Young tries to pretend that capitalism has achieved the goal he says it has, he should take his head from up his arse and do a reality check.

His contention is the most shameless bullshit. No surprise there, then.

BBC Today Prog Backlash

When, over at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs, James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole yesterday blew the proverbial e-gasket over the forthcoming guest editorship of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme by P J Harvey, it was clearly not an isolated incident, but Del Boy forming the advance guard of right-wing froth and rant merchants massing ready to jump on the hated Beeb.

And so it proved: the appearance of John Pilger, Rowan Williams and Julian Assange on the same programme sent both Delingpole’s regular berth, the Maily Telegraph, and the one where he is occasionally given houseroom, the Daily Mail, off the deep end. “BBC Radio 4 Today criticised for 'left-wing tosh' chosen by guest editor PJ Harvey” howled the Telegraph.

The source for that “left-wing tosh” quote? A Twitter feed (singular). This set the tone, as the Mail joined in: “Radio 4's 'worst ever' Today programme edited by PJ Harvey slammed by listeners, MPs and even BBC staff over left-wing rants” it thundered, repeating that one Twitter quotation and magnifying it into “Listeners slammed the 'left-wing tosh'”.

Then the Mail moves to personal attack mode on Ms Harvey: “Grunge musician who inspired Nirvana given control of Today ... She is noted as being one of the most influential artists in the early 90s grunge movement – with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain citing her first album as one of his favourite works of all time”. Cobain means drugs and Very Bad Things, so readers know what to think of Ms Harvey.

What both Mail and Telegraph managed to miss was the theme chosen by Ms Harvey, that of censorship. Pilger and Assange know all about that, via the former’s investigative journalism, and the latter’s association with Wikileaks. By the most fortunate of coincidences, the Mail and Telegraph have also been in the vanguard of those condemning Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

So no wonder they are lining up to kick the BBC over Ms Harvey’s guest editorship of Today, while other news sources see it rather differently: the Independent proclaimed “PJ Harvey's Today programme: 'A radical and refreshing take on the format'” while the HuffPost noted “PJ Harvey Edits Today Programme, Julian Assange And John Pilger Cause A Stir”.

And what’s wrong with provoking discussion? One might form the impression that the Mail and Telegraph want to tell their readers what to think. It’s also not a coincidence that neither leapt in to condemn the guest editorships of Barclays Bank’s CEO or the former head of MI5. Greed may or may not be good, but for the right-wing press it sure isn’t bad. And secrecy is clearly A Very Good Thing.

Anyone objecting can expect the full smear treatment. No change there, then.

Liam Fox Flies NHS Bashing Kite

Still touted as a “senior Tory”, disgraced former minister Liam Fox, who has once again been leveraging his past experience as a GP, has gone running to the Murdoch Times with an exercise which he will no doubt claim is about allowing debate about the NHS, but which in reality is an evidence-free tirade of reusing unsupported quotes to bash the service.

So we see headlines such as “Liam Fox: 'Wasteful' NHS should not have funding ringfenced”, which are not supported by anything more substantial than hot air. Fox blusters that “If you treat the National Health Service itself as being the important entity, and not the patients, then you're on a hiding to nothing”. And where does this happen, except in the minds of Fox and Rupe’s hacks?

Still, on he ploughs: “I think we've tested to destruction the idea that simply throwing lots more money at the health service will make it better. The increase over the last decade has been phenomenal and yet a lot of our health indicators lag behind other countries, particular things like stroke outcome or a lot of cancer outcomes”. But that does not demonstrate the efficiency of the NHS.

It’s entirely possible that other countries are spending more on healthcare, not least the USA, where almost twice the percentage of GDP is spent, and for marginally less good overall outcomes, than the UK. Zelo Street regulars with long memories may recall that the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) did a hatchet job on the NHS back in October 2011 which trod much of the same ground.

This claimed the NHS was “wasting lives”, but failed to point out that the countries that did better spent a lot more money to achieve that improvement. And sadly for the TPA, earlier in that year, a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine showed “the NHS saving more lives for each pound spent as a proportion of national wealth than any other country apart from Ireland over 25 years”.

One of those involved with the study observed “The government proposals to change the NHS are largely based on the idea that the NHS is less efficient and effective than other countries, especially the US ... The results question why we need a big set of health reform proposals ... The system works well. Look at the US and you can see where choice and competition gets you. Pretty dismal results”.

Either the NHS has become massively less efficient in the intervening two and a half years, or when Fox asserts “Anybody who has worked with or around the NHS knows there is still a huge amount of waste associated with it” he is peddling arguments fuelled merely by soundbites and without any basis in fact. But then, Liam Fox is a fan of anything coming out of the USA, good, bad or indifferent.

By all means let’s have a debate. But let’s also stick to the facts, eh Liam?

Migrant Hate Speech Proved Wrong

And so publicity-seeking MPs Keith Vaz and Mark Reckless (the latter, one trusts, rather more sober than he was that summer evening on the House of Commons terrace) descended, with media in tow, on Luton Airport yesterday to greet the hordes of benefit-claiming migrants decanted from an incoming WizzAir flight from Romania. But there was a problem with the narrative.

The flight was not full: just 146 of the 180 seats had been sold. Worse for the rabble rousers, most of those on board were already working in the UK and had been spending Christmas with their families back home, who by implication were not upping sticks and coming to the UK. And when Vaz and the press did find someone taking advantage of that EU freedom of movement, he had a job lined up.

Yes, that was a one-man stampede: Victor Spirescu was going to work today at a car wash, but hoped to move on to something better. He is, after all, a construction worker, so that shouldn’t be a problem, given he speaks good English. He also knew nothing about claiming benefits, and was not intending to stay in the UK beyond the time it took to make some money and return home.

So the scare stories look to have been exaggerated, at the very least. But that part of the Fourth Estate that has been trying to whip up hatred for anyone connected to freedom of movement was defiant, with the Express telling “New migrants could hypothetically cost the UK billions”. Their “experts” were someone from UKIP and Migration Watch. So non-hypothetical bullshit, then.

The Mail both endorsed and condemned Vaz: “The last Labour government, of which he was a member, destroyed our border controls with no debate whatsoever – then, with the help of the BBC, denounced anybody who voiced concerns about the unprecedented influx as ‘racists’” thundered Daily Mail Comment, the authentic, and on this occasion paranoid, voice of the Vagina Monologue.

What the press does not seem to want to tell its readers – well, not until well down the page – is that there are already 150,000 Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, but that the number for Spain and Italy is around two million. And those larger populations are going to be a stronger draw: migrants from Poland went where there were already Polish communities (Southampton and Crewe, for instance).

On top of all that, if we’re talking benefits, the most rewarding destination for those seeking non-contributory assistance is Germany, which also happens to be a lot closer to Romania and Bulgaria. The reason Victor Spirescu didn’t go there is that he didn’t speak the language. Many of his compatriots will not be so concerned about that. But the press will carry on scapegoating, whatever the reality.

Demonising foreigners props up those dwindling circulations. No change there, then.

Delingpole Scrapes The Fascism Barrel

Despite being given houseroom by the Daily Mail today – sneering at the scientists on that Russian icebreaker stuck in the Antarctic ice, in support of the predefined Dacre agenda – it seems James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole is not a happy bunny, and nor is he averse to using some most unfortunate language in his efforts to smear those of dissenting voice.

Not even slightly fair and balanced

Del Boy has taken to the bully pulpit afforded him at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs to have a good whine: “Julian Assange, Rowan Williams, John Pilger – PJ Harvey's plan to wreck the Today programme” he carps. These three gents are, apparently, “the weird blond-haired rat known as Wikileaks; an abstruse, bearded lefty; and a tendentious, perma-whingeing bleeding-heart hack”.

Well, Del would know all about whingeing. But the rant soon goes beyond “What Polly Harvey has just done is the intellectual equivalent of going on Desert Island Discs and choosing as her favourite songs Pavarotti doing Nessun Dorma, Celine Dion doing I Will Always Love You, the Agadoo Song and maybe a couple more tracks by Bryan Adams and Phil Collins. It's all so Occupy, so Change.org, so Russell Brand – so achingly, drearily, gag-inducingly predictable and conventional”.

Soon, Delingpole is carping about musicians whose comments on current affairs “usually look as if they've been lifted wholesale from the troll section on the pages of the Guardian's Komment Macht Frei”. Did Del Boy just tweak the inscription above the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a kind of joke? He certainly did.

But there is no need to worry, because it’s people like “Irish comic Dara O'Briaiaian, Britain's third-most-famous-celebrity-mathematician Simon Singh, perma-smile pouty Astro Boy Brian Cox [and] Prime Minister of Mirth Marcus Brigstocke” who are the real fascists, and not Delingpole.

Readers know this because Del also uses his post to shamelessly plug his Very Wonderful new book called “The Little Green Book Of Eco Fascism”. And by purchasing a copy, they can discover even more of his creative recourse to gratuitous abuse. Having already likened advocates of wind energy to paedophiles, one can hardly wait to discover what he has made up in the meantime.

How achingly funny Delingpole and his jerking circle of pretend libertarians must find it to compare the Guardian to an extermination camp and then call anyone who objects a fascist. After all, they deserve it because “they think gay marriage is really really great – and, damn it, they just don't care who knows it”, so cannot object when Del compares them to Nazis and showers derivations of the word “retard” on them (see Delingpole rants passim).

That’s what passes for “a sense of humour” with him. So that’s all right, then.

Boris Silent On Underground Debacle

London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson loves to collect the plaudits for anything going well. His expertise in populist promises is unsurpassed. But he can’t be arsed with keeping watch over mere detail: this leads him to make pledges he can’t keep, and to lose track of how the critical decisions, meaning the spending of serious money, are made. The Underground is a case in point.

Getting upgraded: a Metropolitan Line S-stock train

So although the Victoria Line has had its signalling renewed, and the Northern Line upgrade is going reasonably well, the much-trailed introduction of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) on the Sub-Surface Lines (SSLs) has not merely hit problems, but has just seen supplier Bombardier pull out, leaving Transport for London (TfL) with a bill for a sum not unadjacent to £80 million.

Bozza is, to no surprise at all, schtum on this small matter, as are his cheerleaders at the Evening Standard (aka London Daily Bozza). Fortunately, the Maily Telegraph has pitched the figures, although the idea that SSL signalling upgrades – to include ATO – can still be brought in by the original target date, now that any new supplier has two years less to do the work, appears distinctly fanciful.

What went wrong? The resignalling was originally to be done by Westinghouse, who have supplied the Victoria Line upgrade. But when the former Metronet Public Private Partnership (PPP) collapsed, it was retendered. Bombardier made great play of their installations elsewhere, notably on the Madrid Metro, but one look at that system shows that it is nowhere near as complex as the SSLs.

Bombardier’s CityFlo 650 system has been installed on Madrid’s Line 1 and Line 6, the former being a simple self-contained end-to-end route from Pinar de Chamartín in the north of the city to Valdecarros in the south. The 6 is a self-contained circular route. The SSLs, on the other hand, are four lines which share tracks with one another, and at their extremes with three other lines.

And the excuse made by Bombardier – “its signalling system was incompatible with the Underground's creaking infrastructure” – is shown to be baloney when you consider that the central part of Madrid’s Line 1 is the city’s oldest line, dating from 1919. What has happened is that CityFlo 650 can manage simple end-to-end and circular routes, but not the complexity of the SSLs.

Why TfL and Bombardier didn’t twig earlier that the requirement was of a magnitude more difficult than that in Madrid – as well as having to work with systems on the Jubilee, Central and Piccadilly tube lines – is baffling. And why the message is still being put out that the 2018 target date will still be met is real Ron Hopeful stuff. Meanwhile, Bozza will carry on lying low and pretend it’s not happening.

That, folks, is what defines a real hands-on Mayor. No surprise there, then.

Mail EU Passport Scare Debunked

Anyone thinking that the pack of lies peddled yesterday by the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dare was going to be the last word in frightening the Daily Mail’s readers over migration from Romania found that, as the New Year was rung in across the EU, it was merely a warm-up act for the main event, as today’s paper has brought an escalation in the rhetoric.

And today’s new scare story is all about passports: “Hundreds of thousands from outside EU could head for UK in passport loophole” screams the headline. And, as the man said, there’s more: “Bulgaria and Romanian offering passports to non-EU citizens ... Romania has offered citizenship to four million Moldovans ... Meanwhile Bulgaria has handed 90,000 Macedonians passports”.

This means only one thing: “All will be able to come and work in the UK under EU rules”. Yes, those dastardly garlic crunching foreigners are sending them all to take our houses and claim benefits! As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point. But a little examination of those pesky facts – the ideal disinfectant when confronted by an onslaught of the Dacre filth – shows the real story.

Moldova was part of Romania until 1940. So many of its citizens are ethnic Romanians. This is rather like the ability of those with Irish grandparents to claim Irish citizenship – you can see the chapter and verse right HERE – and of course an Irish passport gives its holder the right to “come and work” in the UK, or indeed any of the other 20-odd EU member states.

So when the Mail tries to frighten its readers with “Hungary has granted EU passports to those in neighbouring countries. There are only two conditions – a direct ancestor who was a Hungarian citizen and a basic knowledge of the language”, they are describing something more strict than the requirement for an Irish passport (there is no requirement to speak English or Gaelic).

And of course it’s a bit late to start whining about Hungary, whose citizens have been able to live and work in the UK for several years now. You haven’t seen so many of them? That may be because their preferred destination would be countries with which they have historical ties – mainly Austria – and those where they speak the same language – so mainly Germany.

That mere detail does not detain the Mail, and nor does the ability of many born outside the UK to claim British nationality and thereby obtain a British passport. This is just another rabble-rousing scare story: yesterday’s effort claiming there were plane and coach loads of Romanians on their way has been debunked, but Dacre has clearly got his blood up, and so the tide will be unremitting.

Daily Mail: demonising foreigners to sell papers since 1933. No change there, then.