Bercow's Cash Cow

John Bercow seemed an honest sort of gent for a Tory when he was elected as Parliamentary Speaker - he promised a new start and said that he would personify a "clean break" in the wake of Michael Martin's resignation following the expenses scandal.

John Bercow has a lot to smile about, it seems. Is he going to line his own pockets, just like his predecessor?

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Mr. Martin famously claimed around £724,600 in public money to pay for the upkeep of the Speaker's residence, a grace-and-favour apartment upon which the occupant pays no rent, along with another £992,000 to improve the garden and security. £1,716,600 - not bad, eh? That could do a lot of good for an entire housing estate, never mind one apartment - it must be absolutely gorgeous in there after all that and now that Bercow's the speaker he gets to live there. Wonder what he thinks of it?

He thinks it's a "fantastic apartment but it's not altogether child friendly," apparently. Of course, none of us would ever wish to see any harm come to the Bercow offspring - but the £20,659.36 he's claiming just a month and a half since his appointment (22nd June 2009) to carry out further improvements seems a little excessive. Especially when you remember he gets paid the same amount as a Cabinet minister - £141,647 - and, as we've already pointed out, doesn't pay rent on the place. We can't help but wonder if just maybe he ought to pay for his own £6,764.30 sofa, £90.95 mattresses and sheets, £760 window seat cushions and £275 lampshades; none of which are strictly speaking essential in making a home child friendly - in fact, he'd be a lot better off getting the cheapest sofa possible, since he'll need to replace it in a year or so once the little darlings have drawn on it with felt-tip pens, smeared melted chocolate biscuits over it and done all of the other horrible things that kiddies do to furniture. Let's not forget the £80 clock, £86.73 noticeboard and £620 television aerial socket with Sky box he's claiming for either.

That would leave him with a cool £132,970.02 so he could probably have afford the £3600 he spent on window locks (this apartment must have a lot of windows), £47.88 on a hob guard, £3380 on planters to improve terrace safety and £1087 on changing a study into a playroom too. Like I say, nobody in their right mind wants to see any child come to harm; but most of don't get paid anything like that sort of money, but if we want to make our homes safer for our children we have to pay for it ourselves. And he'd still have £124,855.14 left over - quite a bit in excess of the average British annual income, which is around £24,908, only £1300.17 (about the same as a month's rent for many of those who have to pay for their accomodation) more than what Mr. Bercow is paid every two months.

According to a Commons spokesperson, Mr. Bercow says that he is "happy that this information is in the public domain, that the public know how this money has been spent." Will he be surprised if the public don't seem favourable?

Cambridgeshire Police criticised

With Cambridge having a reputation as a pleasant and liberal sort of place, you'd have thought Cambridgeshire Police would be staffed by highly professional officers striving to protect the population, wouldn't you? Ha! How wrong you'd be.

Standards inspectors have compiled a damning report based on evidence they discovered while examining the force. Their investigations revealed that DNA samples, including blood and urine, were stored in improper conditions in fridges and freezers alongside food such as a half-eaten takeaway meal. Legal cases can be won or lost according to findings based on DNA samples - so they really do need to be kept very carefully, very properly and free of contamination. "This raised the prospect of miscarriages of justice and had serious implications for the administration of justice and maintaining public confidence in forensic or DNA evidence," inspectors said.

Perhaps even more worryingly, it seems that some officers have little concern for the welfare and well-being of people in their care- "We are overdue a death in custody," one member of staff told them. They also found instances of inmates left without food for 12 hours or more and closer inspection of cells revealed that a swastika carved into one wall, noticed during an earlier inspection, had not been covered up - it was only dealt with after inspectors complained. Some cells proved to be in a "dangerous" state of disrepair and several ligature points - from which an occupant could commit suicide by hanging - were discovered. Officers were also found to be muting, or completely ignoring, cell alarms. Inspectors watched as a group of officers laughed while watching CCTV footage of one inmate smashing his head against a cell wall - nice to know police find civilians being injured funny, isn't it?

The Chief Inspector of Prisons Dame Anne Bowers stated that: "Urgent improvement was required to bring these suites up to a satisfactory standard." However, Deputy Chief Constable John Feavyour has been quick to claim: "The people of Cambridgeshire can be reassured that this report gives a view of how some things were nine months ago, and not how they are today."

He added that accusations of disrespectful attitudes and lack of care amongst officers has caused "great distress." Ooh, diddums. Come on man, you're the Police - you must be above reproach at all times. The Police exist to protect the public - be they lawful or criminal, and if any officer is neglectful or fails in doing so then they shouldn't be in the job.

British Citizenship Eligibility Test

People who wish to enter the UK and to live and work here permanently will now have to sit a test to see if they are eligible for the right to do so. The test features 24 questions which the entrant must complete within 45 minutes - answering more than 75% of them correctly means they may be eligible for citizenship.

If you were born here, making you British, have you ever wondered how well YOU would do in the test? Well, now you can find out...

Click here to take the test

Acid Rabbi scored 67%, Mrs. Rabbi scored a more respectable 71%. As such, we will both be leaving the country as soon as possible. Expect future posts to be sent from our new home in the Seychelles.

Results of our latest poll...

In the latest Acid Rabbi poll, we asked our readers :"If the BNP's Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons had a race off the top of a skyscraper, who would win?" Possible answers were A: Nick Griffin, B: Andrew Brons or C: Society.

100% of our readers agree that, if the BNP "politicians" (read: hate-filled neo-Nazi scum) Andrew Brons (left) and Nick Griffin (right) had a race to their deaths, Society would be the overall winner.

100% of those who took the time to vote - a whole 15 people - agree that, were such an event to take place (and let's hope that it one day does), Society would be the winner. It's worth remembering, however, that BNP voters may have felt that as fascists they couldn't take place since they don't believe in free votes and instead are of the opinion that violence and intimidation are a far better way to go about organising stuff.

UK hacker to be extradited

Gary McKinnon, the Asperger's Syndrome sufferer who hacked into American government and military computers which he believed contained classified information on UFOs, has lost his latest appeal to halt his extradition to the USA.

The American government claims that McKinnon is responsible for what it calls the world's biggest ever military hack and says that his activities resulted in $800,000 worth of damage to computer systems maintained by a number of organisations including NASA and the US Navy. British lawyers based their case around McKinnon's mental fragility which they say may lead to psychosis or suicide as a result of his illness. Terry Waite, the human rights campaigner who was held hostage in Lebanon for four years, personally requested the USA to drop their extradition attempts and called for common sense. "No nation under the sun ought to convict an individual whose behaviour is occasioned by illness," he said, "Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with [the condition] will know that while the sufferer can be, and indeed often is, brilliant in certain logical processes they can become irrationally obsessive in other directions."

If convicted, 43-year-old McKinnon - who e-mailed US authorities highlighting the weak spots in their computer security, using his own e-mail address - could face up to 70 years in prison. The US government has assured the Home Office that his mental health will be taken into account and that they will meet his welfare needs - promises that are likely to mean little to British ears when so many of us remain shocked at the human rights abuses carried out at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and in Uncle Sam's name at various extraordinary rendition flight destinations.

When we last reported on Mr. McKinnon, we provided a link to an online petition organised by the National Autistic Society. That petition was signed by 4339 people and it was not the only one: just Google "Gary McKinnon petition" and see all the hits - it is very obvious that a majority of British people do not want to see McKinnon extradited, not least of all due to the highly unfair nature of the UK-US Extradition Act of 2003, which allows the US to seek extradition of British citizens without having to provide prima facie evidence despite the fact that the UK still needs evidence when seeking extradition of an American.

"What does it take to make this government sit up and listen to the clear public view that Gary McKinnon should not be extradited?" asks McKinnon's lawyer Karen Todner. What indeed; and what's more, why are our Government - who are selected and voted into power by us to act as our representatives and to do a job that few of us could be bothered to do - ignoring the will of the British people and kowtowing to America? The British Government are our servants, not our masters, and as such ought to do what we request of them. Likewise, the USA is our ally, and though we should be grateful for all of the help they have offered to us over the years we are not beholden to them and should not sit back and let them act as though they are in charge of our legal system.

Since our own Government seems to have forgotten that it is the citizens who are ultimately in charge and are willing to ignore what we're saying, maybe McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp has the right idea - she's appealing directly to President Barach Obama. "Stand by us and make this world a better place, a more compassionate place," she asks, "I'm just praying, please hear us, Obama, because I know you would do the right thing." Got to be worth a try, hasn't it, especially since the White House website claims that Obama is "committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history"?

Fancy e-mailing the Prez yourself? Do so here.

Just fill in your details and change the subject field to "other" - you can copy and paste the following message if you don't have time to compose one of your own:

_______________________________________________

Dear President Obama,

You are doubtless well aware of the case of Gary McKinnon, the British citizen who faces extradition to your nation where he will face charges of hacking into NASA and other databases where he believed suppressed documents related to UFOs might be held, activities which it is claimed resulted in $800,000 worth of damage. He later contacted the authorities responsible for those databases and highlighted the weak spots in their security, leading human rights campaigner Terry Waite to say that the Pentagon should be thanking McKinnon for exposing their computers' vulnerability.

Mr. McKinnon suffers from the autistic condition Asperger's Syndrome. Sufferers of this condition are frequently of very high intelligence, but often display naivety and may become obsessed with a particular subject - as was the case with Mr. McKinnon, who is obsessed with UFOs. "No nation under the sun ought to convict an individual whose behaviour is occasioned by illness," says Mr. Waite.

Although the US Government has promised that Mr. McKinnon's health and welfare needs will be taken into account, his lawyers and family say that there is "clear, uncontradicted expert evidence" that his extradition could lead to psychosis which in turn could result in his suicide. That Mr. McKinnon did not act in a purposely malicious way seems obvious, and although it may be the case that he caused $800,000 worth of damage, is a human life not worth more?

Since you became President, many of us throughout the world have new faith that the USA is a force for good that will protect ourselves and our human rights. Please use this opportunity to demonstrate to us that we can trust in your own goodness and humanity by stopping the moves to extradite Mr. McKinnon and allowing him to be tried in a British court.

Yours,

Your Name Here

___________________________________________

...but make sure you take the opportunity to help save a mentally ill British man from an uncertain future at the hands of a foreign power.

No posts for a few days...

Mrs. Rabbi and myself are off for a few days' holiday so - unless something really exciting like the death of a senior politician happens - we'll not be making any posts because chances are we'll find much better things to do on the beach than fiddling about with the BlackBerry.

Labour loses Norwich North

Rather unsurprisingly, the Conservatives have achieved a vast triumph over Labour in the Norwich North by-election which was forced by the resignation of left-wing Labour ex-MP Ian Gibson after he was caught up in the expenses scandal when it emerged that he had used his second home allowance to fund a flat which he then sold at a discounted price - thought to be around half the market value - to his daughter. His resignation was in protest at a party decision to bar him from standing at the next General Election.

Ian Gibson enjoyed widespread support in his Norwich North constituency, but was barred by the Labour party from standing at the next General Election.

New MP Chloe Smith (pictured right), aged 27, will now become the youngest member of Parliament and will represent the constituency that party leader David Cameron visited six times during her campaign. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, admitted that the election was taking place in what he called "unique" circumstances and appears to have pretty much given it up as a bad job - he refused to join the campaign, says the Daily Telegraph. Mr. Gibson enjoyed great popularity in Norwich and many residents have offered vocal support, saying they would have voted for him had he have taken the decision to stand as an independent candidate. He achieved a majority of 5459 at the last election. Ms. Smith now has a majority of 7348, with the total number of Tory votes (13,591) being more than double those won by Labour's new candidate Chris Ostrowski who managed second place with a total of 6243. Labour have been quick to claim that they would have gained more had the turnout, at 45.88%, not been low; arguing that many Labour voters will be so annoyed at Mr. Gibson's treatment they decided to stay home. Ex-Minister Geoff Hoon called the election "a perfect storm for a governing party," and admitted Labour had no chance of winning.

Gordon Brown can learn two very valuable lessons from this by-election. The first is very simple: if he is seen to have no faith in a local Labour party and its prospective MP, the public will not have faith either. It's very much the same as anyone would feel if they needed some decorating done and the decorator's boss told them that the person he or she was sending round to do the job was rubbish - they'd want someone else to do it instead. Wouldn't you?

Gordon Brown has shot himself in the foot - by preventing a popular candidate from standing, he has lost another Labour seat.

The second is going to be a bit trickier for a man such as Mr. Brown to get his head round: he should not try to choose who represents a constituency - that should be decided by those whose interests he or she will represent. That is surely one of the cornerstones of democracy, which is a concept we've grown rather accustomed to it here in Britain - Blair may have sneakily made off with a big sack full of our civil liberties, but get spotted doing anything the British people interpret as stealing their democratic rights and they will register disapproval (you'd need to stir the apathetic buggers up a good bit more for 'em to consider a revolt, though). Mr. Gibson, without any doubt, acted in a highly dishonourable - though not unlawful - way when he used his privileged position to obtain a cheap home for his daughter (though we're sure she was happy about it) and the voters of Norwich North have already expressed their anger over the matter. However, he was evidently popular enough amongst them (there's a third lesson there, Gordon - a significant percentage of the electorate still favour left-wing MPs. Maybe attracting a few more to the Labour ranks might be worth thinking about?) that they were willing to forgive him, just so long as he kept on doing a job of which they otherwise approved.

The Prime Minister has not only demonstrated that he has little or no faith in Labour councillors, he has also somewhat ironically shot himself in the foot. Had he have listened to what constituents were saying - which would have been a lot easier had he have made a few visits to Norwich - he'd have hung onto one of the ever-diminishing number of red patches in an increasingly blue and Tory Britain. The Norwich North by-election should - and probably will - be seen as proof for Labour that, while Mr. Brown leads the party, they cannot win the General Election and for that reason he must go.

Norwich North by-election results: Chloe Smith, Conservatives - 13,591. Chris Ostrowski, Labour - 6243. April Pond, Liberal Democrats - 4803. Glenn Tingle, UKIP - 4068. Rupert Read, Green Party - 3350. Craig Murray, Put An Honest Man Into Parliament - 953. Robert West, BNP - 941. Bob Holden, Independent - 166. Alan Hope, Monster Raving Loony Party - 144. Anne Fryatt, None Of The Above (NOTA) Party - 59. Thomas Burridge, Libertarian - 36. Peter Baggs, Independent - 23.

Berlusconi is only human

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose recent affair with an 18-year-old model has wrecked his marriage but hardly had any effect whatsoever on the electorate's opinions of him, has commented on the fling and what newspapers claim are recordings of telephone conversations he had with prostitutes.

Berlusconi: "I am not a saint." Maybe Brown and co. could learn a thing or two?
Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 Brazil license.

"There are tons of good-looking girls out there. I am not a saint," he says. The general consensus in Italy seems to be: "You old goat, you!"

Perhaps if our own politicians confessed to being merely human who are as open to temptation as the rest of us rather than believing that they ought to provide some sort of honourable and entirely unnecessary example to us common folk, we might not judge them quite so harshly when their failings are revealed to us. After all, how many of us can genuinely say that, were we in a position whereby we could have a second home and £400 a month to spend on food at the tax-payer's expense, we would not do the same? Personally, I'd have been bathing in Krug and feeding my cat Beluga (only he probably wouldn't eat it, since he seems to prefer fruitcake to the fishy foods typically enjoyed by the feline community).

From The Times...

"...five rabbis were among 44 people arrested across New Jersey yesterday when federal agents cracked an alleged Sopranos-style crime ring..."

Kosher Nostra, anyone?