Four MPs face criminal charges

Disappointingly, only four MPs face charges over their dodgy expenses claims - however, four is better than none, which is how many Acid Rabbi was predicting would find themselves subject to possible prosecution. It remains to be seen whether or not, if you happen to earn a basic salary of very nearly £65,000 a year and have a seat in Parliament, punishment will take the same form - each of the errant Members could face up to seven years in the nick if found guilty. Note the could - though not given to placing bets, we're willing to put at least a quid on none of them getting anything like that.

It's been a while since we last had a look at Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, who finds himself subject to two counts of dishonestly claiming expenses (which is legalese for "being shamelessly on the fiddle"). The first alleges that, between 2004 and 2006, he falsely claimed an extra £14,428 on his mortgage allowance and the second that between 2006 and 2007 he had a further £16,000 on the same property . What do you think would happen to you if you were found to have claimed nearly thirty and a half grand you were not entitled to in Housing Benefit? Prison, in all likelihood, or at the very least you'd be ordered to repay the lot and complete a hundred hours or so of community service - which would be precisely what you deserved. Not the slap on the wrist that Morley's probably going to get. To be fair, he'd be asked to resign too - but he's been planning to step down at the next election anyway.

Elliot Morley faces prosecution over the £30,428 he allegedly dishonestly claimed to cover his mortgage. If found guilty, he probably won't go to prison for seven years like most other people would.

Then there's David Chaytor, another member for whom we reserve an especial loathing. The Bury North MP is alleged to have dishonestly claimed £1,950 for IT expenses and further amounts of £12,925 and £5,425 to cover the costs of renting two properties. "OK, fair enough," you may think, "claiming for rental costs sounds like legitimate use of the accommodation allowance." One small problem there - it appears that the two properties were owned by Chaytor and his mother. Mr. Chaytor also faces a possible seven years, but once again we suspect nothing of the sort will actually happen.

Jim Devine's case is unusual in that he faces prosecution for none of the allegations made against him when the expenses scandal first broke, when it was alleged that he had claimed £2,157 to pay for electrical work, using an invoice with a fake VAT number and address. Instead, he is charged with false accounting - namely that he used fake invoices to claim £3,240 in cleaning expenses between 2008 and 2009, £5,505 for stationery in 2009 and £2,326 for shelving. In the last case, the invoice was later shown to have been supplied by one Tony Moran - the landlord of a pub in Mr. Chaytor's Livingstone constituency.

Last but not least in the dock is Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, who has been suspended from the Parliamentary Conservative Party and who plans to step down as shadow Transport Minister, faces an impressive six counts of false accounting including "numerous" occasions when he falsely claimed for overnight stays in London - documentary evidence shows that he was, in fact, chauffeured to his home in Essex. Lord Hanningfield received a Rural Vision award in 2009 from the Countryside Alliance (an organisation for which we have very little affection, due to their apparent inability to recognise the many country-dwellers who support the ban on hunting with dogs) in recognition for his opposition to the highly unpopular proposed second runway at Stansted Airport and the closure of rural post offices; which, the Alliance claimed, demonstrates that he is a politician with the countryside's future at heart. If found guilty, it will be plain that his own wealth is actually the issue closest to his heart, as has been confirmed of most politicians in the wake of the scandal.

So what is likely to happen to this motley crew of reprobates? Seven years in prison is so unlikely as to be laughable (though in no way as laughable as seeing the whole lot of 'em locked up would be). I doubt we'll be seeing them cleaning up the dog crap and discarded syringes in their local parks, either, as we were hoping would be George Osborne's punishment were he found guilty of his own dubious expenses claims. The original and widespread furore that surrounded the whole debacle when it was first outed by the Daily Telegraph died during the Parliamentary summer recess, when a large percentage of the Great British Public decided to concern themselves with the X-Factor/Pop Idol instead and the baying for MP's blood has diminished to a whisper. Will they even be forced to pay back the money - which, despite the high sums, is unlikely to be the punishment it would be for anyone on the dole (or indeed, earning an average British salary) caught fiddling their benefits since all four are independently wealthy men who will not be forced into a life of drudgery as they try desperately to meet the repayments every month. Slaps on the wrists all round, before they shuffle quietly off to high-paying jobs on the lecture circuit/in finance?

Could it be there really is one law for the poor and another law for the rich and powerful? We shall soon know once and for all.

Acid Quickie - Thatcher's Personal Notes

Thatcher - with some eggs. Look, it's Sunday morning. We can't think of anything better.

The recent publication of ex-PM Margaret Thatcher's personal notes has turned up some interesting facts'n'figures. We hear, for example, that prior to her historic election win back in 1979 she religiously stuck to a high protein diet that included 28 eggs per week. Oy vey - that makes the idea of finding oneself under the Thatcher bedclothes an even more horrendous prospect - no wonder the poor old sod had to turn to the G&Ts.

Thankfully for Sir-to-be Denis' misfortunate nose, his good lady wife was able to give up the eggs following her election win as it placed her in a position to satisfy all of her protein needs by sucking the blood out of the country and its working class for the next eleven and a half years.

Other striking news, such as whether it's true that Maggie slept in a coffin filled with Lincolnshire soil, just as soon as we make it up.

BNP ballot box worries

We suppose when the vast majority of people hate you and everything you stand for - as is, thankfully, still the case for the extreme right-wing British National Party - it's easy to slip into a paranoid persecution complex. Having said that, paranoia is not always an imagined fear, of course. In the BNP's case their worries are very real and leader Nick Griffin knows it - he wouldn't last five minutes on Britain's streets without his security and that's why a phalanx of large, stocky men accompany him wherever he goes. Precisely why the vitriol spat at him from all quarters isn't enough to make him realise that his particular brand of hate-fuelled politics is in direct opposition to everything the British electorate hold dear is a mystery. Maybe he took one too many punches to the head whilst boxing at Cambridge, or maybe he's just a nasty fascist scumbag who is so desperate for any sort of power he carries on in blissful ignorance.

"We know it happens. We just can't prove it," says BNP spokesman John Walker, refusing to admit the reason the BNP don't get many votes is because they're a bunch of Nazi thugs and anyone with any sense hates them.

News came last week that Nick and his Nazis are so concerned that the British establishment and Labour Party will scupper their chances of electoral success (they're forgetting that British values and revulsion at racist politics will do that) that they've invoked the Ballot Act of 1872 which gives candidates the right to place their own seals on ballot boxes in addition to the official ones in order to prevent shadowy figures from opening them up and stealing votes for parties with which they disagree.

John Walker, a BNP spokesman, says that vote tampering has taken place in the past. "We know it happens. We just can't prove it," he claims, which rather reminds us of an LSD casualty who thinks aliens are trying to abduct them - they can't see that the reason they can't prove it is because it's not really happening.

Erm, are you forgetting something here, BNP guys and gals? We're the democrats - we believe in free elections and all that. We don't do vote rigging like you fascists. Anyway, we don't have to - the British people enjoy civil freedoms and have a long history of tolerance and multiculturalism, which means you'll never get the power you crave. For that reason, BNP seals on ballot boxes are a good thing - come the General Election, when you yet again fail to get an MP, you won't be able to pretend it's due to fraud. When that happens, you'll hopefully finally get the message and crawl back under your stones.

Osborne possibly faces possible reprimand, possibly

The name Julie Brighouse probably means nothing to you. We'd never heard of her until now either. All we really need to say about her is that she lived with her partner for seven months in a house near Tamworth - the trouble is, she was claiming housing benefit and income support during that time and "forgot" to let the benefits agency know she was not living alone. As a result, she was paid £5,329.89 to which she was not entitled.

Ms. Brighouse got caught, and was accused of benefits fraud. Once found guilty, she had to pay back the full sum along with costs amounting to £725 and was also required to complete 100 hours of community service.

You have almost certainly heard of George Osborne, because he's the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the MP for Tatton in Cheshire and a man who has been the target of more than one article here - we maintain a particular loathing for him as one of Cameron's cronies and make no claims otherwise. Your man Ozzy finds himself standing outside the headmaster's office this morning because Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon says that he shouldn't have stated the mortgage on his constituency home - which he had declared to be his second home, thus making himself able to claim the mortgage payments on his expenses bill even though the second home allowance is actually supposed to be for MPs to buy a home in London so they can attend debates in the Commons (more about Ozzy's mortgage-related shenanigans here) - was £450,000 when it was, in fact, £445,000.

Citizens of Tatton! Want to see your MP picking the dog eggs off the grass and fishing the Special Brew cans out of the lake in your local park? We thought you might - we would too, even though doing so would mean travelling considerably further north than we're generally comfortable doing (even after immunisation shots). However - you can't. That's because George Osborne is one of the Special People and doesn't get punished for fraud like us common folk.

Five grand doesn't sound a vast amount of cash when we're talking about the price of a grotty council flat off half a million quid. But as Councillor Robert Pritchard of Tamworth Borough Council said following the prosecution of Ms. Brighouse, it's "a considerable amount of money which should have gone to someone who really needed it." As in, not to somebody who has a fortune of over £4 million and stands to inherit both the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and a tasty share of his dad's profitable interior decor business. In other words, not somebody like George Osborne. With a salary of at least £64,766 he could in all probability be said to be in a position to pay his own chauffeur fees and still have change to buy a couple of DVDs of a speech given by himself, rather amusingly on the subject of value for taxpayer's money.

Now, never let it be said that Acid Rabbi treats people unfairly (even though such an allegation is undoubtedly true). In Ozzy's defence, we'll mention the fact that John Lyon has accepted the MP's claims that everything he claimed he claimed in good faith, having quite rightly sought advice from Commons authorities. We'll accept that - Lyon doesn't seem the sort of chap who will fall for any old bullshit to us. We do wonder, however, if those authorities standard reply to any question that boils (with very little heat) down to "can I rip off the British electorate please?" is: "Hey, why not? Go ahead, and sod the proles!"

Despite all that, Lyon believes that Osborne has not been entirely honest in his claims and, later today, George will hear whether or not he is going to face any sort of reprimand. One thing that seems certain is that he will be required to pay something back, something said by the BBC to be a "relatively small amount of money." Not the full amount plus costs then, like Julie Brighouse? It seems safe to assume you won't be able to see Osborne picking up litter and removing graffiti in any Cheshire parks while doing community service, either. Pity, really - I'd take a few dogs down there the night before and get them to do what dogs do best.

Ms. Brighouse may be a benefits cheat, but we think her punishment was sufficient and we're sure she's very sorry. She really doesn't need to have the obvious fact that MPs are not subject to the same laws to which the rest of us must comply rammed down her throat too.

Racist protest is a dismal failure

An anti-Islamic protest organised by racist group Stop Islamisation Of Europe against the building of a new mosque in Harrow attracted just 15 supporters last Sunday.

Meanwhile, a counter-protest - made up of people from many different ethnic groups and backgrounds - achieved a turn out of over 200 people, many of them from Unite Against Fascism, who gathered to show their support for tolerance and religious freedom and their opposition to racism and racist groups

Seems there's hope for real British values after all.

"Legal highs" banned in the UK

So-called legal highs - chemicals designed to reproduce the effects of illegal recreational drugs - have been banned in the United Kingdom following the tragic death of Brighton student Hester Stewart in April 2009. Hester, whose family were formerly members of the Brighton and Hove Orthodox Hebrew Congregation, died aged just 21 after taking a legal high known as GBL which is metabolised in the body into the already-banned drug GHB. GBL and a range of other substances including piperazines and certain anabolic steroids will now be classified as Class C illegal drugs, with possession potentially leading to two years in prison. Dealers could face up to 14 years.

Jugs of GBL siezed by police. What would you prefer in your body - chemicals produced by profit-hungry and unethical drug dealers or something that has been subject to clinical trials?

Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

These substances are undoubtedly dangerous, as highlighted by the sad case of Hester. Some experts have warned that they can be even more dangerous than the already-illegal drugs to which they offer an alternative - so we should all be relieved to hear that they're now illegal.

After all, since heroin was made illegal in this country (it was once sold as an entirely legal remedy for coughs, believe it or not), there haven't been absolutely any heroin addicts at all, have there? Large sections of our cities are not blighted by heroin use, are they? Nobody has been mugged by an addict, so desperate for the drug they cannot live without that they're willing to risk a long spell in prison; and no homes have been broken into and ransacked by people quite literally dying for their next fix. There are no needles lying in the grass in the park or in the stairwells of flats. Same with cocaine - the prohibition on owning and selling it has been a hundred per cent successful in stamping out use. Millions of pounds do not have to be spent on detecting illegal imports and treating overdose victims. Cannabis too, and amphetamines, and ecstasy, and LSD.

Hester Stewart was just 21 when she died after taking GBL. But will probibition prevent more deaths?

Probition worked so well in the USA when it was decided to ban alcoholic drinks, too. Drunkeness vanished overnight and Al Capone and other gangsters made fortunes - what a perfect embodiment of the American Dream.

If the Government believe that banning "legal highs" is going to achieve anything then I'd like some of whatever they've been smoking in Parliament. British anti-drugs policy is failing dismally, and toughening up the law isn't going to work no matter how many more powers the police and customs agents are given. The only way to combat and reduce use is strictly controlled sales through authorised outlets, education on the dangers of drug use and a strong support network for those that have problems. Drug use is not going to go away - people have been deliberately ingesting all manner of substances for thousands of years in an attempt to get high and they will continue to do so.

If your child was ill, would you rather they took medicine supplied by your doctor, medicine that had been produced under clinical conditions by a regulated pharmaceutical company; or would you prefer them to take some unknown chemical brewed up in an East European bath tub, mixed with various other unknown chemicals and quite possibly bleach or rat poison, bought from some shady character in the toilets of a club? If you want to buy illegal drugs, you have to mix with some decidedly unpleasant characters; believe me, I know - I was a regular drug user for many years, and I bought drugs from people I'd prefer to have never met. If they suffered unpleasant side effects from that medicine, would you prefer it if they could see the doctor for advice and, if necessary, go to hospital for further treatment? Or would you prefer them to sit it out, hoping the symptoms will go away, for fear of being arrested and sent to prison?

Such sweeping changes in the law and the research necessary to provide this education would be a lot more expensive than simply saying: "Do not take drugs, otherwise we will punish you," of course. Obviously the Government do not believe Hester's life, even when combined with the lives of all the other people who die after taking little-studied chemicals every year, are worth that much.

חג שמח

BNP Griffin in landslide victory

Headline news out here in the shires - British National Party leader and allegedly-not-a-holocaust-denier-anymore Nick Griffin has achieved the sort of success he so craves in political elections. Unfortunately for him, the poll in question wasn't a political election. It was one among students at Cambridge University to find the worst Cantabrigian ever.

Cambridge University Students' Union don't like Nick Griffin. Thankfully, nor do the vast majority of British people.

University newspaper The Tab reports that Griffin, who studied law at Downing College and left with a Second Class Honours (Lower Division), attracted an impressive 1,097 votes - that's 44% of all votes cast, sufficient to curse Britain with a fascist government should it ever happen in a General Election.

Nasty Nazi Nick is typically quick to argue that the poll reveals nothing, as he is wont to do whenever any poll reveals the BNP do not enjoy the support he likes to claim they do. "This poll does not even reflect the opinions of students at Cambridge. Let's have a debate at the Union and see what students really think," he says - the fury with which Cambridge Union members protested a planned appearance by Griffin in 2002 rather suggests otherwise, however. Could it be that the students have, since then, been "swayed by the follies of the left-wing?" Erm - the left-wing (note: he can't blame the Worldwide Zionist Conspiracy, because he's rather keen on pretending not to be an anti-semite nowadays)? They vanished with the election of Tony Blair. The reason Cambridge students oppose the BNP is that Cambridge is very successful as a multicultural town - it enjoys a cosmopolitan atmosphere of the type that a flat, damp, mid-sized town would otherwise only dream of and some of the University's most luminous alumni were most definitely not the indigenous British people who, according to the BNP, should be the only people to inhabit these isles. All in all, Cambridge has long benefitted from immigrants who have come to Britain and contributed enormously both to the city itself and to Britain and the human race as a whole. What's more, if you fancy a curry there's about 30 places that serve a damn good one.

Jokes aside - what does this tell us? First of all, far right groups such as the BNP have never been popular in the UK. That's why, ever since the 1930s and Mosley's bad day out in Cable Street, British people have opposed them every step of the way and also why no far right organisation has ever achieved more than limited success on the national stage, certainly not enough to give them any sort of real power. Right now - as is so often the case during harsh economic times - they find higher than average support as people seek a scapegoat on whom to blame society's problems. It used to be the Jews, then it was blacks, then Indians and now it's Muslims. Thankfully, the majority of people value freedom and the true British ideals of acceptance, tolerance, the offering of asylum and equality; and it seems that the up-and-coming generation are no different.

Who knows where we'll be in 25 years' time - but one thing's certain: in the years between now and then, when those students currently at Cambridge (and Oxford and Manchester and all the other universities, each of which have strong anti-right wing organisations) take over the reins and run our nation, the BNP will not be getting the power for which they're so desperate.

Anti-Israel bias at the BBC

I am, and have always been, a very great fan of the BBC. I watch many of their excellent dramas and documentaries, I love to watch films without finding myself becoming increasingly irritated by advert breaks every ten minutes and most of all I adore their excellent nature programmes. If they could wrestle The Simpsons back from Channel 4 (where every show is interrupted by adverts before the story even gets started) I'd be entirely happy with the service...well, if they replaced EastEnders with something not quite so mind-numbingly tedious, anyway - though since EastEnders is watched by millions I'll accept it has its place in the world and that I'm likely to be heavily out-voted on that one.


Since Operation Cast Lead there has been a notable rise in those voices accusing the Beeb of displaying anti-Israel bias, voices further fuelled by the decision to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time. However, I've never felt this to be the case: I've always thought that the BBC does an admirable job of keeping any form of bias out of its news programming, one from which other channels and certain newspapers could learn a lot. But I'm pained to say that, last night, I was presented with what to me seems undeniable evidence that what the BBC's accusers claim might just be true.

The Noughties...was that it? (9pm, BBC3) was a fun sort of programme otherwise - a vaguely cynical yet affectionate look at the years between 2000 and the present, the fads and crazes, the celebs and popular stories. The sections on chavs and hoodies even did a rather good job at directing humour not at the chavs and hoodies themselves but at those whose sole aim in life seems to be the demonisation of Britain's young people (take note, any newspapers that felt they might be the ones I meant when I said "certain newspapers" in the previous paragraph). But the section on flash mobs - that brief craze whereby a message is sent via SMS, e-mail and Bluetooth in an attempt to gather strangers in a public place who then do something en masse such as perform the YMCA dance or, as in The Noughties..., the Do Re Mi song from The Sound of Music (you may never have heard of it - businesses rapidly cottoned onto the fact that the phenomenon offered a fantastic and virtually cost-free way to generate free advertising and as a result it became deeply uncool immediately) - contained a worrying segment.

If you missed it (which seems unlikely, as there was absolutely nothing else worth any attention anywhere on British television last night), you can still see it on iPlayer at the time of writing. Fast forward to 0:09:08 for the exact bit in question.

Hundreds of young Israelis gather in the street and have a giant pillow fight. It looks like great fun, too. But listen to the narrator: "...and then, there was the time that Israelis decided to fight with each other instead of their neighbours..."

This, I really don't need to point out, suggests to the uniformed viewer that Israel is an aggressive and warlike nation that regularly decides to attack other countries for no apparent reason. In case you're not familiar with Israeli foreign policy and the conflicts with which she has been involved, let's have a brief look at some of those conflicts. We'll start with the Six Day War which began with Israel's pre-emptive strike against forces formed of Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian troops - but why did Israel launch this strike? Because those neighbouring nations had gathered their military close to Israel's borders and were blocking her access to the Red Sea. Conclusion - Israel was reacting to offensive action carried out by hostile forces.

On October the 6th, 1973, the Yom Kippur War began after Egypt and Syria lauched surprise attacks on Israel, which suffered heavy losses while repelling the attack. Conclusion: Israel was once again attacked by hostile forces, and in response took measures to defend itself.

In 1982, Israel became involved in the Lebanese Civil War when it destroyed military bases which had been used by the PLO to lauch missiles aimed at northern Israel. Conclusion: Israel had been under attack from hostile forces and defended herself.

Under Ariel Sharon, Israel withdrew troops from Gaza
- where their presence had attracted widespread condemnation from many quarters. Hezbollah later mounted an artillery attack on Israel and kidnapped two IDF soldiers, sparking the Second Lebanon War. Conclusion: Israel accedes to Palestinian demands, but is attacked so once again is forced to defend herself.

On December the 18th, 2008, Hamas declared its six-month ceasefire with Israel at an end and by the 24th had begun a sustained wave of rocket attacks on Israeli settlements, bringing terror to Israeli civilians, destroying their homes and only by the grace of G-d not causing widespread death. Israel launched airstrikes, attacking military bases, government buildings and police stations - civilian buildings were damaged during the attacks, but to date there is no evidence that they were intentionally targeted. Hamas then stepped up its attacks, with many Israeli civilian facilities hit. Israel responded with a ground invasion on January the 3rd and withdrew troops on the 21st. Conclusion: Israel and her citizens were under daily attack and Israel took steps to bring the threat to an end.

The UN Human Rights Council has decided that Israel is entirely to blame for the Palestinians killed during the recent Gaza War and makes no mention of reprimanding Hamas despite the recommendations made by the Goldstone Report. When it comes to popular opinion, the jury is still out - many people, both Jewish and otherwise, are still making up their minds over whether or not Israel acted fairly at all times during the war and if not, to which extent. Despite early anti-Israel sentiments, the general consensus seems to be heading in the direction of a feeling that whereas some of the methods employed were excessive, Israel sought only to defend its citizens from a very real and deadly threat. Those early anti-Israel sentiments took the form of widespread condemnation of not just Israel herself but also the Jews in other nations who in the popular mind are so closely associated with Israel; and as a result led to a massive increase in attacks on synagogues, Jewish graves, Jewish property and Jews themselves.

Thankfully, those attacks have tailed off and are now at the more normal levels which, sadly, surprise none of us. That is why neither Israel nor Jews in any other countries will benefit from instances where seemingly-inconsequential little bits of anti-Israel bias are allowed to slip through into the public sphere. Israel is not an agressive nation and Jews are not an agressive people, but there are still many people who would like to see both destroyed. The BBC is is a position to help in preventing this from happening and surely has a duty to do so.

Right, I'm off to make a complaint to the BBC. I hope that I won't be the only one - you can do the same by following this link. I hope you will do so - a throw-away comment such as this one might seem of little importance, but they serve to confirm the prejudices of those who believe that Israel and, by association, Jews, are dangerous and a threat to peace.