war of bullshit

Special advisers to ministers: Salary bill up £1m

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24674247

number-10-downing-streetThe salary bill for ministers’ special advisers has risen by £1m in the last year, according to official figures.

So-called “Spads” are appointed by ministers to provide political advice over and above the impartial work carried out by civil servants.

The Cabinet Office put the increase down to the “unusual” pressures caused by coalition government.

But Labour said David Cameron’s pre-election promise to limit the number of special advisers was in “tatters”.

A leap from 85 to 98 in the number of special advisers – who work directly to ministers and often speak for them – contributed to a 16% rise in the total wage bill in 2012-13.

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Cameron tries to be scary and Fascist like blind old Fascist cnut Blunkett

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Cameron today lied about losing count of terrorist plots foiled by UK intelligence agencies spying on us and that Snowden and the Guardian had put so many lives in danger and made it so much harder to prevent terrrorists blowing up our familes. What bullshit, eh?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/25/david-cameron-angela-merkel_n_4162948.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Friday afternoon, the prime minister said the information leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian and other newspapers had damaged national security and endangered the lives of the public.

He said the leaks had made it “a lot more difficult to keep our countries and our people safe” from terrorists who “want to blow up our families”.

Cameron said as prime minister he could not afford to have a “la-di-da, airy-fairy” view of the work of the intelligence agencies and had “lost count of the plots” that MI5, MI6 and GCHQ had foiled.

However the prime minister repeatedly dodged questions about what Britain did or did not know about the intelligence activities of the United States, including accusations that the Americans had tapped German chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

The airy-fairy is a reference to blind old Fascist cnut Blunkett’s shortsighted Fascist ranting here when he wanted to lock people up indefinitely without that little formality of an airy-fairy trial.

As far as I can tell the “la-di-da” is original Cameron. He may have been inspired by television for infants. La-la Da-da.

I’ll have to see if I can dig something out about the UK government spying on anti-war protesters [later correction: protesters should read activists] and inciting their murder, etc. I’ve been meaning to look for it for a while.

La-la Cameron. La-la

Continue ReadingCameron tries to be scary and Fascist like blind old Fascist cnut Blunkett

Libyan politician to fight UK attempt to keep role in his rendition secret

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/libyan-politician-uk-role-rendition-secret

Lawyers for Abdel Hakim Belhaj to challenge government’s efforts to have his case thrown out or tried in secret

Image of Abdel Hakim Belhaj

Lawyers acting for a Libyan politician who accuses MI6 and the CIA of secretly sending him and his pregnant wife to be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi will on Monday fight a UK government attempt to prevent those responsible from being brought to justice.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife Fatima accuse the government, MI6 and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw of false imprisonment, conspiracy to cause injury, abuse of public office and negligence.

Belhaj’s abduction in 2004 with the help of MI6 came to light when documents were found in Tripoli after Gaddafi’s fall two years ago. They revealed that MI6’s Sir Mark Allen congratulated the Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Koussa on the safe arrival of the “air cargo”, and noted that “the intelligence [on Belhaj] was British”.

The government is expected to argue that the case should be thrown out because it would damage UK-US relations. It is also expected to argue the case is beyond British courts’ jurisdiction given the alleged unlawful acts took place with other states’ help, notably the US and Libya.

Government lawyers have indicated that if necessary they will seek to have the case heard in secret courts set up this year by the Justice and Security Act.

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Extent of spies’ mass surveillance to be investigated in ‘public inquiry’

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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/17/uk-gchq-nsa-surveillance-inquiry-snowden

Image of GCHQ donught buildingIntelligence inquiry begun after Edward Snowden leaks and Guardian revelations on GCHQ and NSA personal data sharing

The extent and scale of mass surveillance undertaken by Britain’s spy agencies is to be scrutinised in a major inquiry to be formally launched on Thursday.

Parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), the body tasked with overseeing the work of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, will say the investigation is a response to concern raised by the leaks from the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the committee chair, said “an informed and proper debate was needed”. One Whitehall source described the investigation as “a public inquiry in all but name”.

The announcement comes four months after the Guardian, and leading media groups in other countries, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, began disclosing details of secret surveillance programmes run by Britain’s eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.

The Guardian has been urging a debate about programmes such as GCHQ’s Tempora and the NSA‘s Prism, which allow the agencies to harvest vast amounts of personal data from millions of people – intelligence that is routinely shared between the two countries.

In a change from its usual protocol, the normally secretive committee also announced that part of its inquiry would be held in public.

It will also take written evidence from interested groups and the public, as well as assessing secret material supplied by the intelligence agencies. The Guardian will also consider submitting evidence.

Conceding that public concerns had to be addressed, Rifkind, a former foreign secretary, added: “There is a balance to be found between our individual right to privacy and our collective right to security.”

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In Theresa May’s surreal world, feelings trump facts

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/12/theresa-may-health-tourism-facts

The home secretary’s claims about health tourists are both wrong and an insult to voters

[Well done by] Nick Cohen

Image of Home secretary Theresa May

When historians of modern folly write their accounts of our capacity to ignore inconvenient truths, I hope they find the space to mention the performance of Theresa May on BBC Radio 4 on 10 October 2013 .

Britain’s home secretary announced that she was cracking down on the “health tourists” who were using Britain’s hospitals for free. The interviewer pressed her. How much money were these health tourists stealing from our pockets? May did not know. The Royal College of GPs, which ought to know, puts the cost at 0.01% of Britain’s health budget – or next to nothing. When the European Commission asked Britain for proof that sly continentals were sneaking into our hospital beds, Whitehall replied that its demand for hard facts was an affront. “We consider that these questions place too much emphasis on quantitative evidence,” it huffed.

Far from being embarrassed, Mrs May was triumphant. Feelings mattered more than facts. Her job as a senior politician with ill-disguised ambitions to become prime minister was to pander to popular prejudice rather than tell the public the truth.

People feel it is unfair that illegal immigrants can use services, she said. They “feel it’s too easy to stay here illegally”. They had the “feeling that people who are here illegally were accessing services”, she continued, before degenerating into a babble of random noise, from which I just about made out that the “people” who had these “feelings” were, of course “hard working”.

In For the Time Being, Auden has Herod explain why he must save the classical world by killing the infant Jesus. If religion triumphed, “Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions… The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age”.

Mrs May can make you feel that way, as, indeed, can an hour spent watching prime-time television or reading the tabloid press. As Ukip threatens its core vote, the Conservatives will spend 18 months trying to flatter the deluded into voting Tory by telling them that they are right to put their “riot of subjective visions” before paltry facts.

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Auden warned that when populist heroes are worshiped, “the general, the statesman and the philosopher become the butt of every farce and satire”. If our statesmen (and women) choose to put feeling and prejudice before thought and evidence, however, a butt is what they deserve to be. Let us hope they become one. Let us hope that the mocking laughter becomes so loud it drives them out of public life.

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