Embarrassed Government in ID cards climbdown

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has announced that plans to introduce compulsory ID cards for staff and pilots at Manchester and London airports will not now go ahead, right after the announcement that ID cards for British citizens will be voluntary - which is a bloody good thing as far as those of us here at Acid Rabbi are concerned, since it'll save us the fines we'd end up paying sooner or later due to our absolute refusal to carry a card proving our right to live in our own country.

Compulsory ID cards are widely thought to be intrusive and an infringement of civil liberties amongst the British population.

"Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens – just as it is now to obtain a passport," says Mr. Johnson, "Accordingly, I want the introduction of identity cards for all British citizens to be voluntary and I have therefore decided that identity cards issued to airside workers, planned initially at Manchester and London City airports later this year, should also be voluntary."

He also admitted that the current government have allowed the cards to become thought of as what he termed a "panacea" that could prevent terrorism. Amongst politicians at any rate, Mr. Johnson. Most of us out here amongst the electorate never saw them as anything but a severe infringement on our civil liberties. This forms yet another embarrassing climbdown for the Government, who have had to change their plans due to public opinion on several occasions recently.

However, he also stated his wish to speed up the introduction of a voluntary scheme for young adults across North West England, where the £30 cards have already been introduced in Manchester.

Hmm. ID cards (albeit voluntary) for a particular (and much maligned) demographic group in society and a fascist MEP? The North West of England could be mistaken for 1940s Bavaria were it not for the local accents.

Harry Cohen MP quits "to spend time with family"

Harry Cohen, the Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead, is stepping down at the next General Election in order to spend more time with his family, especially his ill wife. What a nice man he must be, giving up a £64,766 job for such selfless reasons.

Harry Cohen (right), with Andy Burnham (left), Labour MP for Leigh.

Spending more time with the family is, as we all know, the reason often given by MPs when they decide to leave Parliament for all sorts of things that they'd prefer not to list - quite a few of those who have recently announced their resignations as a result of the expenses scandal have used the excuse, and it's rapidly becoming a virtual admission of guilt for any unspecified wrong-doing. So, what's Mr. Cohen been up to just lately?

Leyton and Wanstead is in North London, around 40 minutes on the tube from Westminster (much quicker by bicycle, I've found) which is by anyone other than an MP's standards really quite a reasonable commute. It's far enough to make Mr. Cohen eligible for the second home allowance, however, because he also has a main home in Colchester; so naturally he made the most of that one. And when we say he made the most of it, we mean he really made the most of it - he's claimed £104,701 in the last six years.

What's more, he's been an MP since 1983, so the total claimed is quite possibly astronomical - what he claimed between 2002-7 alone is the highest of any MP representing an Outer London constituency. The back-bencher, who claimed in the past that he was "the most professional MP Leyton and Wanstead has ever had, and that includes Winston Churchill," maintains that he will be cleared of any wrong-doing by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, a statement that will probably prove to be true since he has claimed only what he is permitted by current Commons rules - he has not "flipped" homes to avoid paying maintenance or Capital Gains Tax, nor has he "forgotten" when a mortgage was paid off and continued claiming for it.

That Mr. Cohen has played by the rules is not in any doubt, but once again it has been demonstrated that those rules desperately need to be changed. Only those MPs who live a significant distance from the Commons should be allowed to claim for a second home at the tax-payers' expense, and when one considers the very good salaries they receive they should not be permitted to claim such large amounts. They are the servants of the people, and while we should expect to pay them an adequate amount to carry out their job effectively, at the moment it's more as though we are serfs paying duty to the mighty barons so that they can continue to live in their castles.

Mr. Cohen says that John Moore, the ex-Conservative minister, once told MPs to "Go out boys and spend it" after he had announced a huge increase in their allowances in an effort to prevent a Parliamentary revolt over pay. "That makes it part of my salary. It really is part of my salary in all but name. That is what it exists for," he says. We cannot fault him for his greed - he is, after all, merely human; and so many of us are greedy that it's a rare person who can truly claim that were they part of a system such as that enjoyed by MPs they too would not have done the same. But that doesn't make it right - all decent people would feel shame once their greed was exposed.

This rather suggests two things. One is that Mr. Cohen, who says "I am doing nothing wrong whatsoever. I am using it for parliamentary purposes. It is a legitimate and proper use of it," does not feel shame and as such is evidently not a very decent man. For that reason, the people of Wanstead and Leyton should feel glad to be getting rid of him, no matter if he appeared to serve them well enough that they continued to vote for him for 26 years. Secondly, the rules must be changed to prevent those MPs who, through no fault of their own, cannot resist the temptation to grab whatever they can - it's not their fault, it's just how we are as a species. But we tax-payers work hard for our money and most of us enjoy far smaller salaries than Mr. Cohen and his colleagues, so why are we expected to foot the bill for their lavish and luxurious lifestyles?

Some may argue that Mr. Cohen's case also reopens the debate on whether or not MPs should be expected to live in their constituencies. Referring to his claims, he says that they are "the legitimate costs of having a constituency home to do my job. We don't have a system where people are required to live in their constituency." If we did, his main home would have been in Leyton and Wanstead, putting him in a position to better understand his constituent's concerns. This would not, however, have prevented him from claiming for a second home as he would still have been entitled to claim expenses on another property altogether, much as George Osborne designated his Cheshire residence as his second home when he wished to avoid paying mortgage interest on his London property. Though the second homes allowance is intended to cover the costs of the home supposedly closer to Parliament so that the MP will not be required to travel large distances, there is no part of that rule specifying that the property needs to be anywhere near Westminster, nor even in London. Another rule that needs to be changed to prevent abuse and greed!

Recession still not over, despite Government reassurances

Cast your minds back to last year - remember Gordon and Alistair reassuring us that the economic crisis would all be over by July? Those newspapers that then supported the Government (ha! Good times, eh Gordon?) made a bit of thing about it all, hinting heavily that since Mr. Brown and Mr. Darling are both economists (Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer prior to becoming PM and so he can be expected to know at least a little on the subject even if he did study history at univeristy, Darling still is) we could all sleep easy in our beds, safe in the knowledge that the two Parliamentary experts couldn't possibly be wrong.

Do Gordon and Alistair need to go back to school for some GCSE Economics classes?
Or are they just a pair of lying scumbags?

But they were - that was a bedtime story and what's more, that great big credit-crunching monster under the bed is just beginning to feel hungry. Here we are, less than 24 hours from July and guess what's happening? Green shoots of economic recovery? Hell no - it's been announced today that the UK economy shrank by 2.4% in the last quarter. That's the biggest decline in over half a century! Just last week we were warned that whereas the rest of the world will soon start seeing improvements, it's likely to get worse here. Unemployment looks set to rise again, so that soon 1 in every 10 people will be scraping by on whatever laughable amount people on the dole get these days. Now the OECD, who say that Britain is in the grips of what it calls a "severe recession," are warning the nation that our economy is going to shrink by around 4.3% over 2009 as a whole. The pound is so weak compared to the Euro that if you decide to nip over to Calais this year you won't even be able to buy the kids some of those weird French sweets, never mind load up the car with cheap fags and wine - assuming your car hasn't been repossessed, that is.

The UK's national debt currently stands at £8.5 billion in May (it was £1.8 billion for the same month in 2008), which has led Standard&Poor's to alter the country's credit rating from "triple-A stable" to "triple-A negative." Any triple-A rating is good, but the new designation means that should the nation need to borrow money, it won't be handed over with quite so much enthusiasm as previously. Think of it as the difference between a friend happily lending you £50 to see you through to the end of the week with no questions asked, because he or she knows you'll pay it back on time with no excuses, compared to having to make grave promises that you'll pay it back when you say you will because they're worried you might start being funny about it - the friend lends you the money either way, but there's a big difference.

This change is an unignorable warning that things are not going well. In addition, any further downgrade could lead to the Treasury finding itself liable for higher interest rates when repaying future borrowing.

So, far from coming out of recession as promised, it seems rather as though we're in a bit of a tight spot and the walls are closing in. Could it be that Gordon and Alistair don't know what they're talking about, or were they just bullshitting us all along?

Cyclists to become mobile pollution sensors

Cough, hack, cough, splutter! A team of - cough - researchers from Imperial College London - wheeze, cough - is carrying out a programme which will see - hack, cough, cough - pedestrians and cyclists equipped with sensor units to monitor urban air pollution. Cough.

Motor vehicles contribute a large percentage of the air pollution found in urban environments.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

Excuse me one moment, just finding my inhaler, wheeze. Scientists, environmentalists and those with respiratory complaints - cough, cough - have become highly concerned about PM10 particles (sooty specks smaller than 10μm found in traffic exhaust fumes) which have been linked to cases of asthma, heart disease and a number of other ailments. Though not as well known - hack, cough, pant - as carbon monoxide and other compounds associated with internal combustion engines, PM10s are a very real worry. Wheeze.

New EU law dictates that the UK must cut down on nitrous dioxide pollution, a compound also found in exhaust fumes, cough."There is a lot that we do not know about air quality in our cities and towns because the current generation of large stationary sensors don't provide enough information," says Professor John Polak, the head of the scheme which is to be carried out in London, Cambridge, Gateshead and Leicester. The new sensors, which can measure - wheeze, hack, splutter - five different types of pollution, will enable scientists to more closely study localised air pollution - pant, cough, wheeze - in urban areas as well as to produce 3D "pollution cloud" models which will then allow experts to advise change if street planning - ie; the location of traffic signals - is causing a build-up of fumes in that area.

As a cyclist who - cough, wheeze - regularly rides in urban areas, Acid Rabbi would be pleased to offer his services to the team and would like to point out that, should they choose to take him up on the offer, they will be able to save money -cough, pant, hack - on the sensors and simply listen to his lungs right after he'd ridden any more than 100 metres. Wheeze.

Poll Results

We created a poll asking how readers were planning to vote come the next General Election. The choices were as follows:

A. Conservative

B. Labour

C. Liberal Democrat

D. By writing "Fuck Off" on a brick and chucking it through a House of Commons window.

Labour received a total of zero votes, closely mirroring their performance in the local and European elections that took place at the beginning of June. The LibDems also received none, possibly because most LibDem voters only read the Guardian and don't have time for blogs such as Acid Rabbi in between doing that and shopping in Waitrose. We didn't bother including the BNP for the simple reason that few BNP voters are likely to bother reading a blog called Acid Rabbi, and anyway few of them have the mental capacity to use a computer. We also ignored UKIP because, well, we find that's the best thing to do with them.

The Conservatives were awarded 14% of the total vote, which translates as a stunning 2 votes, whereas option D - writing "Fuck Off" on a brick and throwing it through a Commons window - was by far th most popular with an incredible 85%, a whole 12 votes.

Unfortunately - and tempting as it may be - were anyone to actually do this, the brick would not count as a vote, even though if everyone in the UK who would have chosen this option had they have seen the poll were to do it during a well-attended debate it would most certainly get noticed and the protest it represented would be hard to ignore. It'd also almost certainly attract the attention of riot police with tear gas and dogs and result in mass arrests, of course.

Maybe, as an alternative, ballot papers need a "None of the above" section? In the meantime, it looks like the Tories are in the lead.

So where's Mandelson got to this week?

Where is Grand Vizier, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills, Lord President of the Council, Lord of the Dance, Oh Lordy Trouble So Hard, Probably Future Leader of the Labour Party Lord Lord Lord Mandelson (Respect Me, Bitches) this week? He seems to have vanished.

Not that we miss him, mind.

Dodgy Git Of The Day...er, Week

Once again, finding a suitable candidate has been a tricky task. Last time we did Dodgy Git of the Week - or indeed, Dodgy Git of the Day as it then was - the problem was that there was such an abundance of dodginess and such a plethora of gits we just couldn't narrow it down to one person, so we gave the award to the entire British Parliament.

Today, it seems the problem relates to some American pop star or another who last made a decent record in the 1980s. Whoever it was, apparently they've gone and died so the newspapers are full of that - and no doubt the Government will be using it as a golden opportunity to announce martial law or the enforced closure of the Daily Telegraph or something along those lines - which has resulted in British politics being rather overlooked for the first time in months.

However, our politicians won't ever let us down and of course we can always rely on at least one of them to do something suitably dodgy and gitesque. Thankyou Ann Keen, Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, you stepped up to the challenge.

Now. Mrs. Keen is, as we all know, married to fellow MP Alan Keen and they have a house in Brentford, just ten miles from Westminster. But hey - that's far enough for them to have a second home closer to Parliament at the tax-payers' expense, so you can bet your bottom pound sterling that they made sure they got one. Trouble is, they then forgot to live in the main residence - which they have to pay for - for seven months, and now the local council want to take it away from them and use it for some worthwhile purpose. That seems pretty damn dodgy in its own right, but why is Ann getting the Dodgy Git award all to herself?

A few years back, in 2005, one of Ann's staff members injured themself at work which resulted in spell of absence from the job. When they returned, it was decided that they would need to complete an occupational health assessment. The staff member decided he or she would like this done privately, since they had private medical insurance. There was still a £150 contribution to be paid, however, and although £150 isn't a great deal of money in the big scheme of things nobody would want to pay it if there was a way to avoid doing so. But good old Ann, with her rather juicy MP's salary, stepped up to the mark and paid it for her loyal employee.

Such altruism! Such charity! How on Earth can Acid Rabbi possibly see such noble actions as deserving a Dodgy Git Award, you may be thinking? Well, this is Ann Keen, remember, one half of the notorious scam duo...sorry, married couple who claimed nearly £138,000 for a second home and then let their main one go to waste, even though as London residents they're surely familiar with the sight of people sleeping on the cold, wet streets. So what did she do? Obvious. Like we say, nobody wants to be £150 down if there's a way to avoid it, and for Ann there was a way - she just submitted an expenses claim and we paid for it instead! £150 for private medicine which, though a tiny amount, could have gone to the cash-starved National Health Service that the vast majority of us have to make do with.

Well done, Mrs. Keen. You are a fine example!

Cameron, the Master Popularist

Listen to David Cameron speak with your eyes closed and you could easily be forgiven for assuming you are listening to Tony Blair, not least of all because every sentence seems to start with "Look..." before going on to list the great things he claims his party will do.

Like Blair, Mr. Cameron is a master popularist, highly skilled at correctly guessing what the public will want to hear and saying it at the right time - ie; before Gordon Brown says the same thing, which serves to give the impression that it was his idea in the first place - even if he's actually just repeating in a louder (and much posher) voice what Mr. Brown has already said.

A: Stegosaurus. Had an arse with a brain inside it.
B: David Cameron's Face. Looks like an arse with a brain behind it.

A case in point is the two leaders' reactions to the ongoing expenses scandal. While Brown was still flustered, wondering what on Earth he needed to do and whether or not there might be a way that it could all be made to look like nothing very important (some hope of that!), Mr. Cameron had already realised that it was on the cusp of becoming the biggest and most damaging event in British politics for decades, one that would forever taint Parliament's reputation amongst voters. Rather than even attempting to argue that his MPs had done nothing wrong, he seized a prime opportunity for some point scoring and announced that Conservative Party members would be expected to explain their claims and begin paying money back, regardless of what was eventually decided. He knew that, no matter what happened, as far as the electorate were concerned the MPs had been caught with their sticky fingers in the till and nothing was going to reduce their anger so instead of trying to defend them he contrived to give the impression that his party knew it was in the wrong, was very sorry and was now going to make amends. That's still not a very good impression to give, but it's a lot better than looking as though you're futilely trying to get away with your misdeeds in the face of damning evidence which, until very recently at least, is precisely the impression Labour were giving.

Labour have caught up, but it's too late. They may have now paid back more than £316,000, 66% of the total amount repaid compared to the Tories' £131,000 - 27%, and that may be at least partly because Labour have had a lot more MPs but as far as the public are concerned, Cameron forced the repayments before Brown did and therefore, if not honest, must surely be less dishonest than his rival. Now, the Conservatives have said they will pay back a further £125,000, bringing their total to around a quarter of a million - very close to that repaid by Labour.

Look at their body language in the Commons, during Michael Martin's resignation. Mr. Brown - slumped on the bench, reading his notes, looking for all the world as though he'd enjoyed a wee dram or two of Laphroaig in the Commons bar (not that any of us here can find fault with a wee dram or two of Laphroaig, the enjoyment of which is a basic human right in our opinion). Mr. Cameron, meanwhile, sat upright on his side of the debating chamber, watching and listening with rapt attention. A few bloggers shared their thoughts on it at the time, whereas we are not great believers in body language, feeling that too many people attach too much importance to it; but regardless of what we think, a lot of people will have seen it and formed the impression that Cameron listens to people while Brown isn't interested in others. His sincerity may be doubtful, but he still comes out looking better.

Back in 1994, Blair used the Labour Party conference to announce his plans for Labour's future, beginning with the radical changes to Clause IV of the party's constitution. At that time, the Conservative party was at its lowest ebb - John Major was a highly unpopular Prime Minister and his party had been rocked by a series of scandals popularly known as the "sleaze allegations." Blair took advantage of this and followed up his '94 action with further moves in a special 1995 conference when he replaced the Clause entirely with a statement declaring the party to be one representing democratic socialism, and in doing so created what was to become known as New Labour. The rest, as we all know, is history - in the 1997 General Election, Labour trounced the Tories, who suffered their worst defeat since 1832, and began the long period of government that we remain in to this day.

Right now, Labour are still recovering from their awful results in the recent local and European elections, a contest that saw them attract their smallest share of the vote since the party began. The expenses scandal has hit all of the main parties equally, but it's Labour who look as though they'll end up with the greater amount of egg on their faces (with the possible exception of Nick Griffin, who isn't even involved) because many of the most notorious claimants - ie; Elliot Morley, Shahid Malik, Baroness Uddin, Margaret Moran - are Labour members. Hazel Blears hasn't helped matters either, as she now realises. Lord Mandelson may yet prove to be Labour's albatross - Mr. Brown may have an enormous fondness for him and he may be gaining popularity amongst Labour MPs, but when the public hear his name, they immediately think of his two forced resignations and associate him with controversy.

Meanwhile, only two Tories have achieved infamy on such a scale - David Chaytor, who is by far the most damaging of the two and may even face criminal prosecution, and Peter Viggers with his duck house which would have cost £1600, had he have been granted the requested money, which is a sufficiently low amount and a case just funny enough to have become used as a little light relief amongst the many claims for far larger sums (the LibDems, on the other hand, seem to have come out of it all smelling relatively rosey - it was one of their MPs, David Howarth, who has managed to achieve virtual sainthood by claiming nothing other than basic costs strictly related to his job. Precisely why they are not making the most of this is unclear - perhaps they don't want to attract attention to themselves right now, hoping that the other parties will draw fire and that small matter of Micheal Brown's £2.4 million will be forgotten about).

What goes around comes around, and fortunes change. Twelve years ago, it was the Conservatives who suffered a run of bad luck and Labour took control of the game. Right now, Labour have been dealt a phenomenonally bad hand and as much as the party bluffs, they can't change that. The Tories may not have any aces, but David Cameron is a far wilier player than Mr. Brown.

Brown: Labour needs "to be ready for and to win" General Election

Incredibly, Gordon Brown seems to be clinging on to belief that his battered party is still in with a chance at the forthcoming General Election, outlining a new four point plan that he hopes will turn Labour back into a "disciplined, united and campaigning party." He said that unity, measures to limit the effects of the recession, political clean ups and promoting the party's vision for public services are the key things they must concentrate on if they are to win another term, obviously forgetting to mention they'll also need the help of some very powerful witches since it looks rather as though hardly anyone is going to vote for them.

Could the stress of the last couple of months have all been too much for the PM? Has he finally lost the plot...who knows what other fantastical beliefs he may have?

"We were never allowed above all the noise to put forward our message about the future for our public services and our country," he said, showing that he is still unaware that nobody cares about Labour's policies anymore, being so angry at what is seen by many as the widespread ripping off of the tax-paying public by MPs, and indicates his belief that people will return to the party once they begin to see the benefits of the anti-expenses abuse legislation he is putting into place. Unfortunately, he is also unaware that the population as a whole no longer has any faith in his or any other politician's integrity and that the new measures aren't worth the paper they're printed on. There's also a small problem called David Cameron, who has proved himself far quicker off the mark than Mr. Brown. He admitted that MPs had been in the wrong and vowed to do something about it long before Gordon did, and although most of the electorate are so disenchanted with Parliament that they won't even bother to go to the polling

You can say what you like, Mr. Brown. Nobody is listening to you anymore - they just want you to go.

It may be unfair that Labour is bearing the brunt of the population's anger over expenses, but Labour was the party in power when it happened and it's the sort of scandal that, as far as many people are concerned, can only be remedied by change. Mr. Cameron, who for all his faults has his finger on the button, is very good at gauging popular opinion; chiefly because, unlike Gordon, he listens. Whether or not he will also act remains to be seen when he becomes Prime Minister next June.

UK at risk of terrorist cyber attack, warns HMG

Britain and its people are likely to suffer widespread and devastating online attacks from hostile nations and organisations, according to the Government's all-new cyber security section of the National Security Strategy (which, in our opinion, is the most horrendously American-sounding name and as such desperately needs to be changed).

In addition to looking at ways to protect the public from identity theft and online fraud, the strategy also attempts to find ways to prevent the Government and businesses falling prey to attacks from hackers seeking secret data. Lord West, cyber security minister, said that "various state actors are very interested in cyber warfare. The terrorist aspect of this is the least, but it is developing. We know terrorists use the internet for radicalisation and things like that at the moment, but there is a fear they will move down that path."

*Click delete* "Now, infidels, let us see how your evil empire gets on
without its precious Lolcats...mwa ha ha ha ha!"

Crime of this type is said to cost the UK several billion pounds each year. Speaking on the subject of possible future cyber terrorism, Lord West said: "As their ability to use the web and the net grows, there will be more opportunity for these attacks." He also confirmed that Britain has, in the past, been the victim of state cyber attacks originating in Russia and China, adding that future attacks might target government departments, major businesses, the National Grid and financial markets.

Reporting on the story, the BBC reminds us that MI5 boss Jonathan Evans, in a 2007 speech, claimed that foreign powers "increasingly deploy sophisticated technical attacks, using the internet to penetrate computer networks" in an attempt to steal sensitive information including that related to the military. It also says that "terrorists who have used the internet for fundraising and propaganda are also believed to have the intent - if not yet the capability- to carry out their own cyber-attacks" and that "The range of potentially hostile cyber activity - from other states seeking to carry out espionage through criminal gangs to terrorists - is daunting."

Scary stuff, even if you're not of a particularly paranoid mindset, because the nation's vital infrastructure is highly dependent on computer networks nowadays. Any attack that succeeded in preventing the effective use of those networks could throw the country into chaos as supply chains, communications and health service organisation broke down.

You can't help but wonder if the fact that all the fuss the Government and state broadcaster are making of it comes so soon after the Government's embarrassing u-turn on so-called Big Brother databases, however, which were to be used to store details of telephone calls, SMS text messages and internet use. Jacqui Smith, prior to her resignation as Home Secretary due to the controversy surrounding her expenses claims, was forced to admit that the plans would not go ahead due to lack of support from the public who believe such measures would be intrusive and an infringement of their right to privacy.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human and civil rights organisation Liberty, said that she looked "forward to this U-turn being followed by limiting DNA retention, dumping ID cards and a less callous approach to privacy protection more generally." However, the Government still wishes to gather data on the public's confidential and private communications and plans to force all telephone and internet service providers to allocate each a customer an ID number which can then be linked to stored details. Providers have been reluctant, saying that the gathering and storing of such vast amounts of data is impractical.

While the threat of cyber crime and terrorism in undoubtedly a real one, at any other time moves to prevent it would in all likelihood have been veiled in extreme secrecy (which seems to be the Government's preferred operating procedure for just about everything these days until they're forced to open up to public scrutiny, nevermind in those cases related to national security). Is the Government - who have had to carry out a number of undignified climb-downs in the face of public anger recently - trying to frighten us into submission?

Ann and Alan Keen may lose home

Ann and Alan Keen, the married couple who are both Labour MPs, may lose their Brentford house following demands from Hounslow Council that they explain why it is unoccupied.

Ann Keen, MP for Brentford and Isleworth.

The Brentford property, according to the council, has boarded-up windows and paint splashed over the inside of the upstairs windows. Certainly sounds uninhabited to me - and a source from the council says it's been that way for seven months, according to the BBC, who also say that the couple have thus far declined to comment. Either that or they're using it as a crack den.

Alan Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston.

Interestingly, this is the house the couple have declared to be their main residence, which entitles them to claim expenses to cover the costs of maintaining another property that they have designated as their official second home, closer to Parliament. The Keens were amongst the first people to be named in the controversy surrounding the expenses scandal due to the fact that their main residence is just ten miles from the Commons, yet as it falls outside of the area deemed by Parliament to be close enough to Westminster to make a second home unecessary, they are nevertheless entitled to claim for its upkeep; this being used to demonstrate that even those MPs who have not broken the rules may still not have acted morally. If they are shown to indeed not be spending any time at the Brentford house, this could well be one of the most blatant examples of expenses abuse so far.

Darren, keen on getting a roof over his head before the winter.

The council says that it has written to them and explained that urgent action is required in explaining their circumstances, but it is believed that they have not yet responded. If they continue not to do so, the property may become subject to the Empty Dwelling Management Order law, by which it can be repossessed and put to a better use.

How many homeless people do you think are going to be sleeping on London's streets tonight? It seems obvious that the Keens don't care, or they wouldn't let a house go to waste.

Donate to Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity.

Shahid Malik - Escapologist!

We'd been wondering what our old mate Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, has been up to since we last reported on his travails relating to his expenses claims which are generally considered to be, at best, slightly shifty if not outright fraudulent.

Shahid Malik - wizard!
Image adapted from one at Unyclopedia, used according to Creative Commons license.

Shahid, as we all know, was forced to step down from the Cabinet (which is politician-speak for "asked to go") when the Daily Telegraph revealed that they were ever so slightly confused over precisely which of his properties was his second home since he seemed to be spending most of his time at the one he said it was - this, according to Parliamentary rules, means that he ought to declare it as his first home and be responsible for the maintenance himself. Next thing you know, people were accusing him of trying to get the tax-payer to fund his luxury lifestyle, which was all a bit unfair - after all, why should our man with his £95,617 per annum salary be expected to pay for his own big television and massage chair? Some people thought he might have been renting his constituency flat - owned by a personal friend of his - at a preferential rate too, which would have been frowned upon as well, because MPs are required to mention things like that.

Poor old Shahid then had to go through the indignity of being investigated by a Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, and things were looking bad. But, as luck would have it, he was found not guilty even though he couldn't provide proper records to show what he'd been paying - either way, Gordon Brown gave him a nice new job in his freshly reshuffled Cabinet. Hurray!

But the big bad bullies at the Telegraph hadn't finished with him yet, and they started saying that Shahid had also been claiming for two different sets of office space - and what's more, one of them formed part of his house and that's not allowed either. Now they say that he claimed £1015 more than he should have done to cover the cost of his Council Tax too, which Mr. Brown is going to feel a bit embarrassed about because when he gave Shahid his new job, he made him Under-Secretary of State for Communities and, in that role, guess what he's partly responsible for...? Yep - Council Tax!

There's an old saying: shit sticks. It means that, if you can stir up enough controversy around a subject, some of it will forever be associated with that subject. Another old saying maintains that there's no smoke without fire, which means that if there is indication of something happening, then something is happening. Mr. Malik has now been so entangled in the expenses furore that even if he was able to produce miraculous evidence that proved he's done nothing but behave better than a shock-trained labrador on Ritalin, he'd still have a faint dodgy whiff about him for the rest of his career. Anyway, all these stories of his supposed impropriety couldn't all be false, could they? There must be a grain of truth, somewhere...

That last paragraph nakes him look a bit of a political albatross all in all, and you have to wonder why the Prime Minister - who has been working hard to clean up his battered government in the hope that they won't take quite such a kicking come the General Election as they did in the recent local and European elections even though he knows they cannot possibly win - might want someone of whom the electorate now have a deep suspicion in his Cabinet. Mr. Malik is beginning to look like the star pupil of Lord Mandelson's Surviving Scandals and Damage Limitation Academy.

So anyway, back to the story. As we were saying, we were just wondering what Shahid's been doing with himself for the last week or so since the censored expenses details were published, knocking him out of the headlines so we Googled his name. We haven't had sight nor sound of him since then and he hasn't even popped round for a cup of tea since...er, well, he just hasn't popped round for a cup of tea.

But guess what we found on Google? Shahid Malik - magician, illusionist and escapologist, no less! Suddenly, everything is clear!

Well, bugger me! They must be related to one another, surely? The likeness is far too great for them not to be family!

Irish Racism

How would you feel if, when you're on your holiday this year, the natives spat at you in the street? How about if a mob of them attacked the place you were staying in, chanting terrifying slogans that informed you in no uncertain terms that they hated you and wanted to kill you and your children? Imagine that they were so violent and so persistant that you took refuge in a church, certain that there you would be safe; but the mob threw bricks and smashed the windows, covering you and your children in shards of broken glass.

This symbolises the real Britain. Racist thugs do not - unfortunately, racist thugs are what one hundred Romanians will forever associate our nation with.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

It wouldn't take long before you forgot the photographs in the travel agent's glossy brochure and you became convinced that you were in an vicious, violent country inhabited by evil, blood-thirsty savages, would it? Would you recommend it to your friends when you got home, or would you tell them the people living there are nothing more than the very worst sort of barbarians? Would you hate them and their country for the rest of your life?

OK, let's flip things around a bit. The country is Britain - Northern Island, and it's not you, it's a group of people from Romania. They're not on holiday, but have become so entranced by the pictures and what they've read in the brochure that they've decided they would like to spend the rest of their lives in the country they thought they were going to; working, paying taxes, raising their children, becoming a part of the people and community they so admired.

If only enough of us could have told them: "Don't worry about the people who hate you, they're not representative of most of us. We are not violent people, we are not full of hate, we do not deliberately seek to injure or kill children, and we will protect you and your children from those that would. We will help you set up homes here, get jobs and contribute to our country, since you love it as much as we do. This is the real Ireland and the real Britain, not that. We are better than Nazi Germany."

If only we'd made our point of view known, before the racists won. If only the rest of the world could see that the vast majority of us are kind, generous, welcoming people. It's too late now.