Jacqui Smith Nearly Gets It

Warmer, getting warmer, ooh ...

However, Miss Smith said that she did not think her expenses would be the main issue about her re-election.

Getting very hot, hotter ...

“People are more worried about paying their mortgages and keeping their jobs. I think I have been made a scapegoat in many ways,” said Miss Smith.

No, Jacqui, you're cooling right off now. And you were so close.

Of course MPs were targeted disproportionately over expenses. You were hammered because of other issues, so you're correct on that score.

But if you can't see that, as the front for a highly unpopular ID cards scheme, amongst other illiberal initiatives, your refusal to listen to valid concerns from your voters fuelled the gleeful kicking you and porno Dickie received, you really don't understand people at all, do you?

The public don't like being ignored, Jacqui, especially by those who are elected to serve them. It really is as simple as that.

You want to win the election? Tell the voters of Redditch that Labour will do what the people want in future and not whatever you damn well please in cahoots with your state-paid buddies.

Got that? No, I didn't think so.

Sigh.

Ironic Epilogue To Nick Hogan Jailing

The Lancashire Telegraph is reporting that Nick Hogan's stand against the smoking ban has been vindicated in startlingly ironic fashion.

A MAN who was kicked out of smoke ban rebel Nick Hogan’s pub for lighting up returned brandishing a knife.

“The customer swore at him and was ejected, but he returned about 20 minutes later with a huge carving knife and was brandishing it at them. Luckily the security staff locked the doors and the man went off. The police are now looking for him."

Unless you've been on an extended potholing holiday, you'll be aware that Nick Hogan was jailed at the end of last month for non-payment of fines accumulated due to contravention of smokefree legislation.

Nick argued that it was up to the authorities to police the smoking ban, and that it was wrong, and dangerous, to force him to be an unpaid enforcer. Both Anna Raccoon and Old Holborn highlighted this unfair delegation of authority as they raised the near £9,000 required to free Nick from prison.

This incident makes it crystal clear that Hogan's concerns were far from unfounded, and that his argument has now been conclusively proven as valid.

Despite the fact that there has still not been a single identifiable death, worldwide, from passive smoke, smoking bans very quickly establish themselves as instigators of violence in their own right wherever they are applied.

For example, a mere two weeks after the New York ban was implemented, a bouncer was killed enforcing it. In England, the first murder caused by the ban occurred just 23 days after it came into force on July 1st 2007.

These were both well reported, coming as they did so soon after the infliction of an unpopular law but, as we see with Hogan's case here, the division, violence, and occasional death still occur. In the main, such crimes are not picked up by the national press, and sometimes not even locally, but are merely subsumed into the figures for anti-social behaviour.

But the constant threat does exist, and is a danger to pub and club owners, and managers, the length and breadth of the country.

Cowardly MPs can't even buy a kebab without a police escort, are continually talking of the violence which accompanies alcohol, and would never dream of tackling such a problem themselves.

Yet they are happy to see others put themselves in danger by policing the state's ideological ego trips at pain of crippling fines and, as we witnessed in Hogan's case, imprisonment.

And politicians wonder why we hate them.

Fines for not 'enforcing' the smoking ban should be repealed, immediately and without question. They have already led to more violence and death than passive smoking ever will, and they will continue to do so.

Labour MEP Welcomes 'Undesirables' To The UK

Top Labour Euro trougher, Mary Honeyball, had been rather boring of late, but it's always worth checking in now and again to read the gold-plated ideological crap that she spouts. Even more so when she is sprinkling unsubstantiated accusations of racism around like confetti.

Reporting on a Hampstead debate, she had this to say.

The most obvious spilt (sic) between those on the platform was about race and immigration. UKIP, as you would imagine, were fairly openly racist. I even had one woman come up to me afterwards and tell me just how racist she found the UKIP representative’s comments.

That's it. No example. No quote to open up the debate. Just a bald statement preceded by an implication that UKIP are, without question, a racist party. So she was pushed for more information in the comments by Gawain Towler. Her reply stated that she had given all the background that she was prepared to give.

You ask what the UKIP representative said. I thought I made it clear that I felt the UKIP policy on immigration is racist as did the lady in the audience who raised it with me after the meeting

Still no example, still no quote. Just a reiteration of a statement backed up by nothing in particular. So much for responsible blogging then.

Considering that UKIP's stance, if I understand it correctly, is to oppose the 'open door' EU cross border policy (specifically, by getting out of the EU altogether), it would seem to suggest that Honeyball regards anything, other than letting everyone in without question, as racist.

Her equally laughable remark toward Tory policy backs this up.

The Tories are little better. Their proposed five point system for allowing people into Britain is discriminatory, designed to keep people they see as undesirable out, surely a racist policy if ever there was one.

So there you have it. A Labour MEP branding as racist anyone who wishes to keep undesirables out of the UK, or advocates sensible immigration. Even if the Tory policy is one which has been followed by such obviously racist nations as Australia, Canada, and the US for decades.

According to Honeyball's fuzzy thinking, Jacqui Smith is also a racist.

Grass Roots Activism

You gotta love this. Visit these guys for a video of how it got there.

Brilliant.

Via Iain Dale & The Clown

Jackboot Jacqui And Another Consultation Scam

Lawson Narse doesn't miss much. He's picked up on an article at the Telegraph by Alex Singleton that rings some bells at the Puddlecote residence.

Jacqui Smith failed to consult over new anti-photographer law

The Royal Photographic Society - established in 1853 - ought to have been at the top of the list of organisations consulted of how the law would work in practice. Yet the society, which has a Royal Charter, tells me that it has unsuccessfully been trying to meet Miss Smith over the past year, despite the encouragement and help of a backbench Labour MP.

Labour do have a very strange interpretation of the terms 'stakeholder' and 'consultation'. They similarly omitted the views of those who are directly affected by their policies when they 'consulted' on hiding tobacco displays, as I mentioned in December. The Tobacco Retailers Alliance also tried their hardest to talk to Labour, but were swatted away, as reported at the time by Medical News no less.

In a report on the Future of Tobacco Control consultation published on Tuesday 9th December 2008, the Department of Health appears to have deliberately omitted evidence offered by the Tobacco Retailers Alliance.

Ken Patel, Leicester retailer and National Spokesman for the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, said: "First the Minister refused to meet with retailers, now they have censored our formal response to a public consultation."

Campaign Manager Katherine Graham said; "We are not listed as one of the respondents although our response was submitted by email and also sent by post, so we can be certain it was received. For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report."

Alex Singleton continues,

It is no surprise, given this failure to listen to those who know their subject, that legislation eminating from Westminster has become of such a poor quality. It is, alas, too much to hope that the Home Secretary will repent of her authoritarianism, and repeal this terrible legislation.

It's not just the photography law that is blighted by such 'consultation' that is nothing of the sort. Labour consistently 'consult' only themselves or carefully cherry-picked QUANGOs that agree with their view.

Increasingly, such QUANGOs are couched as 'charities' and furnished with your taxes to lobby in agreement with Brown and his assorted control freaks. If you take a contrary position to Labour, however well-researched and argued, and however historical, honest and popular your organisation, the government-funded nutjobs will prevail. You're screwed.

This isn't just worrying anymore, it's anti-democratic and could even be classed as treason in my book.

Without wishing to bring down a Devil's Kitchen-style shit-storm regarding personal voting choices ... anyone who still intends giving their X to Labour at the next election, is either incredibly stupid, or a 24 carat cunt.

Jacqui Smith: Encouraging People Trafficking

If anyone is still in any doubt that this Labour (mal)administration holds its own electorate in utter contempt, Jacqui Smith's much-discussed and much-ridiculed new legislation on prostitution should dispel that quite convincingly.

The Home Office believes that the new measures will shame men who pay for sex by “removing any ambiguity from possible offenders' minds about the potential consequences”.

Ministers are hoping that yesterday's changes, which will also allow kerb crawlers to be prosecuted for a first offence, will help to change the culture surrounding prostitution.

And the moral/healthist/environmental scare behind this particular slice of righteousness is ...

... to highlight the connection between prosecution and people trafficking, of which about 4,000 women in Britain's sex industry are victims.

All very admirable I'm sure. People trafficking should definitely be tackled, it's abhorrent and any moves to halt its progression should be hailed. But one must wonder how much Jacq the Ripper (H/T Leg-iron) really cares about the young girls being trafficked, or how committed she is to actually catching those responsible.

A London police unit dedicated to tackling human trafficking will close after the Home Office withdrew £2.3m funding support.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed the Human Trafficking Team will disband in April 2009

Yes, you did read that correctly. Jacqui's own department earlier this month stopped paying the Metropolitan Police for tackling the supply of trafficked prostitutes that her new law now purports to protect.

It wasn't like the unit wasn't getting results either ...

The news comes just a week after the human trafficking unit saw the successful prosecution of a gang of six men who trafficked young girls and women into the country and forced them into a life of abuse and prostitution.

This is all-too-common Labour authoritarian bullshit. Except this isn't Blair-ite bullshit, it is exclusively manufactured under the management of Brown and his puritannical front bench nannies. Blair's approach was to legalise brothels, thereby protecting the working girls and controlling the criminal elements that preyed on them. Jacq the Ripper has scrapped that completely and gone the other way, criminalising the customers while simultaneously allowing the criminal elements free reign to further harm the girls themselves. How fucking stupid is she?

Not stupid at all if you understand that she doesn't give a shit about the girls or trafficking, she just wants to stop a practice of which she disapproves. We've seen it all before and it always follows the same formula. Those engaging in a lifestyle choice with which Labour disagree must be 'shamed' as in this instance, and also the instance of those that like a drink. With smoking, the term is denormalisation.

Each of these is backed up, chess style, with an implied insult just waiting to be fired at those who disagree. If you think ID Cards are wrong, you surely agree with innocents being blown up. If you disagree with the smoking ban, you wish to inflict cancer on bar staff. If you object to separate queues for alcohol, you advocate kids binge-drinking.

And if you think her new rules on prostitution are wrong and ill thought-out, you must therefore wish to see young girls being abducted and forced into brothels against their will.

No, Jacqui, your withdrawal of funds to the Met Police show you up to be a Class A danger to girls who are trafficked. The sum total of funding for the entire country to tackle this menace is a paltry £1.7m. I repeat that. £1.7m FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY for a WHOLE YEAR! A budget like that is barely enough to keep an office of 7 or 8 well-trained coppers, with accompanying resources, going for the year.

But why should she care as long as a few men paying for a service, that the estimated 80,000 voluntary working girls choose to provide for financial gain, are shamed and their lives destroyed? Job done in her tiny illiberal mind.