New Terror Plans Are A Muddled Mess

New terror plans unveiled by the government have nothing to with fighting terrorism and everything to do with political posturing and striking fear and panic, as the old spectre of WMDs and the 'war on terror' is resurrected to prop up a beleaguered government and hapless home secretary, while the real causes are brushed under the carpet. 

At a stroke, decent muslims are again branded as a bunch of baddies as home secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled a new UK strategy to tackle an apparent terrorist threat, ignoring the root causes of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and half-baked measures to get to grips with the preachers of hate. 

Harking back to the bad old days of WMDs and 45 minutes, the home office used fear and panic with the audacity to trot out a warning of an increased risk terrorists could get hold of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to attack the UK with dirty bombs. So how come Brown is coming over all cosy with Iran?

The government paper, Contest Two, updates the 2003 strategy updated in 2006. The next update no doubt won't be far behind. 

By 2011, the government wants  to spend £3.5 billion a year on counter-terrorism, while the number of police working on counter-terrorism had risen to 3,000, from 1,700 in 2003.

There's more chance of being run over by a bus than there is  being blown up by a terrorist. More police just make the odds of shooting the wrong person that much higher. 

The Orange Party is late coming to this, after listening to Smith waffle on the Today programme, mainly because it's taken so long to read the damn thing. It's full of muddled unjoined-up NewLabourSpeak thinking. 

Without an historical, political, social, cultural and international context, it is quite meaningless. Moreover, without dovetailing into other over-arching UK domestic and foreign policies, it's not worth the paper it's written on. 

Putting the frighteners up nobody, homes secretary Smith says "challenges should be made to those who undermine our belief in democracy". Beat them over the head with a copy of a wet challenge, that'll sort them out. 

What's lacking is the context - a sociological imagination - and a framework which would put the current terrorism 'threat' into perspective and point a way forward to a solution. 

Instead the government plans to train 60,000 selected snoopers to spy on potential terrorists and at a stroke stigmatise anyone who looks a bit Middle-Eastern.

With the government  trailing in the polls, Brown and Smith are raising the hairy old chestnut of terror panic for political reasons. 

Of course there is a threat but this government doesn't seem to have a clue what it is. Hiding behind a muddled smokescreen, they can't see that years of misguided domestic and foreign policies are a large part of the problem and that means they cannot provide an answer.

Fears and warnings over dirty bombs abound. Yet with the UK 'reaching out' to Iran that's where the problem lies. Gone are the days when Blair could pull the wool over our eyes with a fruitless search for enriched uranium for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. 

Iran backs the fundamental Islamic terrorist and through a circumspect route that is where the bomb-making comes from. Even if Iran is genuine about just wanting nuclear power, it's so easy for a sympathiser to turn a blind eye.

Suicide bombers are now more sophisticated, practising in the killing fields of Afghanistan with live troops as target practice. Pull out the troops and you take away the  target practice for an attack on this country. 

Time and again suicide bombers justify their actions on video, with a tirade against the current UK and US occupation of muslim Iraq and Afghanistan. UK troops will be stationed in Iraq for at least a year in some number. In Afghanistan, with a new troop surge on the cards, the bloody, hopeless and unwinnable war is set to drag on for years. Pull out the troops and you remove a reason and justification for terror attacks. 

At home, border security has been tightened but the preachers of hate and their brain-washed slaves thrive. Playing a cat and mouse game with the authorities up and down the legal ladder, hiding behind the shield of half-baked human rights legislation. 

Authorities turn a blind eye to recruitment in the undercover mosques for fear of upsetting 'the muslim community', when in fact the vast majority of muslims would welcome a root and branch clear out.

Trailing in the polls and still smarting from the 42 day detention debacle, the measures announced to 'combat terrorism' are a slippery slope to holding suspects without charge.

All the Orange Party's muslim pals want what everyone wants and that's just to live their lives, make a living and look after their families. 

They have no truck with the preachers of hate and no truck with anyone who is bent on radicalising the youth for their own power and glory.

At the end of the day there'll always be terrorists lurking around somewhere or other. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter and that's the same in a draconian dictatorship and it is in a free democracy. 

The key is to take an overview and co-ordinate all government policy, both domestic and international. That's what isn't happening and that why report Mark 3 will have to be rewritten as report Mark 4 after the next outrage. 

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Chancer Darling Joins Smith's Scam

Chancellor Darling has been exposed as just another chancer using the same second homes expenses fiddle as two homes secretary Smith. If the public thought anyone would lie straight in bed it would be the fastidious chancellor Darling. But second homes expenses scams seem to run in the cabinet family. 

What is it with cabinet ministers and their obsession with second homes? Cabinet ministers have used the allowance to claim more than £2 million over the past six years. The Orange Party has an simple answer- greed. 

Greedy government ministers, with first the home secretary now the chancellor caught shamefully fiddling commons expenses. 

The Mail On Sunday's  second Sunday instalment reports Darling's done a Jacqui over commons expenses after it emerged he lavished £70,000 on his family home in Edinburgh, claiming thousands of pounds in taxpayers' cash by classing the £1.2million townhouse as his ‘second home'.

Before he became chancellor, Darling claimed that a small London flat - worth only around £150-a-week in rent - was his 'main home'.

You can't make it up. And judging by the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph reports - they haven't. 

Only last week, home secretary Smith was caught out in the same outrageous expenses scam  after  she'd claimed £116,000 on her family home in Redditch, claiming her West Midlands family home is her second home, while lodging with her sister in London and claiming that is her first home. 

And Smith is not the first cabinet minister to be caught using their MPs' homes expenses in a squalid rip-off at the taxpayers' expense. 

Brown's favourite cabinet couple, Ed Balls and wife Yvette Cooper were let off the hook  after it was claimed they had been able to "maximise" their taxpayer-funded second homes allowances, by claiming their London home was their main home. But not before they faced questions over their decision to flag up their Yorkshire home as their main home, even though their children attend school in London.

Once again we will have to go through all the rigmarole. There is no suggestion that Darling broke any commons rules. It's all perfectly within the law. 

But that's hardly the point when the rest of the country is having to suffer the misery and hardship of a deep and depressing recession. Ministers are on the take in what is nothing short of a common commons scam.

But once again it seems with ministers wrapped up in their own arrogance and self-interest and with the full backing of Brown, any cabinet minister caught fiddling expenses can ride out the storm. 

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Only A Disguise Will Stop Public Ridicule

Two million on the dole, a home secretary fiddling expenses, Brown sucking up to City pals refusing to budge on bonuses while his favourite banker is fingered for sacking a whistleblower, the country in deep recession. Who'd want to be seen as a New Labour MP? 

Public anger over bankers, jobs and the government's economic mess is turning to ridicule but ministers still bury their heads in the sand.

Today Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, told voters what they can see and feel all around them -  the UK is facing a deep recession. It's a sorry state of affairs but unlike the greedy bankers, no-one in government has the guts to say sorry.

Blair's ex-deputy, John Prescott's on-line battle of the bonuses may be capturing the mood of the nation but more importantly it's reflecting the anger and frustration of backbench Labour MPs. 

Brown needs to get a grip and stop the dithering. Just say what everyone wants to hear - bonuses must be scrapped when the taxpayer is a shareholder in any bank. 

He won't because he can't. The whole New Labour project was based on the fundamental flaw of sucking up to the City to keep them sweet and the government in power. 

Labour's born-again working-class hero, Prescott, was happy to go along for the ride if that meant power and glory. Those days are long gone. Now voters are deserting in droves and Tories and LibDems can outflank the government when the public's on their side. 

The sorry sight of the former bankers' mumbled and staged outburst of remorse before the commons treasury committee left voters cold. 

The Orange Party dozed off watching a pointless and carefully managed PR charade unfold but woke when the finger pointed at Brown, as three of the four guilty men lorded it up with their Ks and Ps on full view - all thanks to their government pals. Failure now brought ample rewards in the past. 

But it's Brown's close ties with his knighted economic advisor, Sir James Crosby, which struck at the heart of the problem, when former HBOS head of risk, Paul Moore revealed he was fired by Crosby, then the bank's CEO, after repeatedly warning about the bleedin' obvious. 

On top of all that unemployment is at a monumental high since New Labour grabbed power and two homes Smith is praying her homes scam will go away before it blows the lid off government sleaze and corruption. 

Today at PMQs Cameron has a chance on so many fronts to prove that he really is the true Mr Angry and Brown's reported "anger" is just part of the Downing Street spin. 

So what can New Labour MPs do? Backbench MP, Frank Field, has an answer: "This anger is likely to be such that the only way that Labour MPs will be able to go out in public will be in heavy disguise - such will be the public ridicule."

UPDATE 11.46am: Brown's buddy, Sir James Crosby, has quit as deputy chairman of the useless Financial Services Authority, just minutes before Cameron could get really angry, during PMQs. Did he jump or was he pushed?

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Bankers Say Sorry So What's The Big Deal?

They came, they got grilled, they mumbled the S-word through clenched teeth, in a pointless PR exercise in double standards, wallowing in self-pity and remorse. Greedy bankers have been exposed as a bunch of greedy bankers. It's all a bit too little to late.  

The BBC's Common Purpose business guru, Robert Peston and political pundit, Nick Robinson, are both on hand to explain it all to the nation. The media and politicians are having a field day, forcing the former bankers onto their knees in a day of shame.

Sure it's good to watch the bankers get a roasting, though it's a pity Vince Cable's guillotine was meant as a joke.  

Former RBS bosses Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop, closely followed by Andy Hornby and Lord Stevenson of HBOS - all bar one rewarded with a K or a P thanks to their pals in government. 

Now it seems all quite happy to face the music, as the banks play musical chairs while the country slides into a deep downturn, recession,  depression depending on who you want to believe.

It seems the government is taking its own blame culture just a tad too far, treating the ex-bankers like naughty children. Shame on you, a slap on the wrists, say your sorry. That's it. After a spell on the naughty step, off they sail into the wild blue yonder with their fancy titles and a wad of pocket money. 

How they must be laughing all the way to their banks. A quick apology to Parliament and a lesson in damage limitation for the next time someone screws up big time. 

It all must serve a purpose, apart from watching them squirm but the Orange Party cannot think what. Everyone knows the lessons to be learnt. It's called greed. 

The charade is certainly not for ordinary folk who're scared stiff about losing their jobs and making ends meet while the debt-fuelled boom takes its toll on every aspect of their lives. 

Meanwhile two homes secretary, Jacqui Smith, is doing the rounds of the media, wriggling around her homes scam using the pathetic excuse that she's done nothing wrong and was only following the rules. Isn't that just the same old corrupt excuse the bankers have been making? 

And back in the other big boy's world, Brown is trying to upstage Cameron as the new Mr Angry. Cameron is blaming borrowing Brown for the economic mess and quite right too but the Tories were not exactly shouting warning from the rooftops during those bloomin' booming years. 

Now if this was Brown and his bunch of economic morons who were being brought to book and made to apologise to the nation, people would sit up and take notice. 

But it's not. It's this month's Mr Nasties, the bankers, who're in the firing line. Not the home secretary, not the deluded prime minister, not the rest of the parliamentary elite who can hide behind the rules when it suits them and milk the system and bleed the nation for all it's worth.

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Well-Stuffed MPs Return To Palace Of Plenty

Well-fed MPs drift back to Parliament today after a record-breaking 24-day festive holiday at the taxpayer expense, as people suffer the worst slump for nigh on 30 years. Meanwhile home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has a lot of explaining to do about her bogus figures. 

While shops go to the wall, UK manufacturing falls at its fastest since 1981, numbers on the dole the highest since 1997, MPs have lost their conscience and connection with ordinary folk.

Job losses seem to have escaped the public sector fat cats with meaningless job titles, now part of a long overdue crusade by many national newspapers. At the top of the public sector food chain stand the country's MPs, ring fenced and cushioned from the recession and the growing band of 'payroll MPs' flushed with promoted egos and self-importance. 

What a difference a job makes. On the one hand, the government offers top whack wages, generous benefits and gold-plated pensions to its card carrying Common Purpose quango lackeys, while in the real world of real dwindling jobs, it's all wage cuts, unpaid overtime and short-time working.

The grotesque contrast between the harsh world of struggling ordinary folk in the economic crisis and the cosy comfort of the political elite, is most evident in the closeted world of MPs and their lifestyles, as they look set to continue to squander our money. 

While occupational pension schemes are being closed down, MPs' pensions remain protected. Hard-pressed families struggle with debt, but MPs have their mortgages paid for them by the taxpayer. People are tightening their belts but MPs' generous expenses system allows them to squander taxpayers' cash on furniture and home improvements. 

Peter Oborne, writing in the Mail last week, put his finger on what he called a national disgrace: "MPs who put private profit above public interest are treating voters with contempt as they milk their expenses system." Yet still nothing on MPs' expenses has been published.

Top of the dishonesty pile must come home secretary, Jacqui Smith, who seems to have put on a bit of weight over Christmas, according to the picture above, to face questions over more bogus figures and face accusations of becoming a bit of a big fat liar. 

Last year, she was forced to admit that immigration numbers were made up. Letters to newspapers sucking up to her while attacking the Tories were actually written by friends or relations.

That's on top of the revelation that the home secretary misled MPs over knife crime statistics. And there's the not so very small matter of Tory opposition spokesman Damian Green, who looks set to be cleared over trumped-up home office leak allegations.

Meanwhile Brown faces his first real test of the New Year as he tries to look busy doing nothing and prepares to spin his way around the go-ahead for a third runway at Heathrow with a decision on the controversial scheme, opposed by environmentalists and west Londoners, expected in the next few days.

More than 50 Labour MPs are opposed to it, along with the Conservatives. But Brown is behind the scheme and, backed by deputy prime minister Mandelson and a very powerful Heathrow lobby and advertising campaign, the government is set to wriggle its way around the pollution and noise with the promise of a new high-speed rail link on top of another runway.

The high point on the horizon? Some political commentators are bending over backwards to toe the Downing Street line that Brown has ruled out holding a spring election. He's done nothing of the sort. He lives and breathes election strategy and how to wrong-foot the Tories. 

Last week team Brown spent around £200,000 of taxpayers' money on a pre-election tour of the north. Mandelson's minion, Derek Draper, who has set up a New Labour propaganda blog, with contributions from, er, Mandy and Brown's bully Charlie Whelan, is already in a pickle over 'moderation'. Brown's personal Downing Street website a flagrant breach of the civil service code, would not look out of place in North Korea. 

If that's not all blatant electioneering, the Orange Party is at a loss to know what is.

Photo: Tractor Stats

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Smith Used Sex To Sway Voters

Plans to punish punters who pay for sex have been exposed as a cheap election gimmick, with critics rounding on home secretary Jacqui Smith's tough stand as just riding on the back of the popularity stakes.

Proposals from the home secretary left the Orange Party feeling distinctly uncomfortable. 

Here was a raft of tough-talking proposals coming out of the blue and receiving widespread publicity. That begged the questions - why now and why those measures in particular? 

Cracking-down on customers who pay for pimp-controlled or illegally trafficked prostitutes smacked of the warped inverted sexism and party politics so beloved of the government. 

A voice of reason and common sense was needed. Preferably female, liberal minded and preferably with a religious tone which could speak from a respected moral high ground.

Those voices have now been heard. But surprisingly they are voices from the political right which have rounded on the home secretary. Voices which one would expect would take a firm hand on prostitution. 

At issue here is yet more laws and control. No government can outlaw prostitutes, never could, never would, but it can try its damnest to outlaw prostitution. 

In a well argued article in the Sunday Times, Minnette Marrin, is clear: 'Slithery Jacqui Smith wants a backdoor ban on prostitution'.

"Anyone with a tittle of sense would see that this is unworkable and unfair ... Once again this government is trying to override common sense, human nature and personal freedom in the interests of a policy not fit for purpose." 

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI), named after Thatcher's favourite economist, takes an equally bold stand and cites Roman catholic priest, George Pitcher, from the Daily Telegraph: 


“Laws made by legislators with an eye to the electorate, rather than care for the oppressed and vulnerable, can make lives considerably worse for those who most need our protection ...  Cosy, self-satisfied, middle-class observers may claim that there is no such beast as a good user of prostitutes. The prostitutes themselves would disagree.” 

As the ASI points out: "When an ordained priest of the Church of England writes that the government’s policy of criminalising paying for sex then it is quite likely that those in power might be making a mistake.'"



Crucially ASI states: "The motivations behind this government’s approach are clearly the perceived popularity of the tough stance."

The ASI also harnesses Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, writing in the Telegraph on the home secretary and government thinking which “include the radical feminist thesis that all heterosexual sex is exploitation, a Marxist view that all work is exploitation, and a religious evangelism which argues that all non-procreational sex is wrong.”



The Orange Party believes there's a simply effective solution in licensing but that's not one which would find favour with the warped views of government. 

All prostitutes would have to be licensed. In happens already many parts of the US and elsewhere. That licence crucially controls age and is often only given after medical and drugs checks show the all clear. 

As Marrin points out: "If every prostitute had to get an up-to-date licence showing her photograph, birth certificate, nationality, licensed place of work and registration with the police and show it to every punter to prove she was not under duress, many of the worst traffickers and pimps would be forced out of business."

Decriminalisation is shared by Dr Brooks-Gordon: “Ministers should scrap the prostitution laws and start again by following New Zealand's lead in decriminalising the industry, which empowered workers and reduced violence."

Those sensible measures would require a politician to be honest with voters. Honest about wanting to protect the most vulnerable prostitutes and honest about motives. 

At a stroke though those measures legalise prostitution and that's a difficult political pill to swallow. 

However the public would prefer this honest approach to tackle a social issue and an honest debate, rather than the current half-cocked measures pushed out for pure political advantage. 

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Jenkins Final Plea On Liberty

Journalist and author, Simon Jenkins, was one of the first voices of reason to question the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Many of his views have been welcomed by the Orange Party. Now he's standing down from the Sunday Times. He'll be sorely missed. 

Recently Jenkins delivered a call to trim the fat off the London 2012 Olympics - though that was in the Guardian to which he's been closely associated for a number of years. 

Now apparently he's leaving for pastures new and the National Trust but not before delivering a final plea on liberty. 

The Sunday Times has had a New Labour makeover. It is now all style and no substance. Hard edged news reporting has been sacrificed for articles more suited to a magazine than a newspaper. 

Time and again the "Insight" page, of which Jenkins was one-time editor, is back-referenced in a nostalgic throwback to the halcyon days. 

Maybe Jenkins didn't fit in with that New Look? But who will replace him? Alistair Campbell is back at Downing Street and making a big splash in today's Sunday Times Review. Now that would be too much.

Jenkin's final missive is a brilliant piece condemning both the surveillance society and Big Brother tactics of a decade of New Labour, in which he makes a farewell pleas to MPs - defend liberty. 

Home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is firmly in his sights as the article catalogues recent GCHQ moves to tap into all mobile phone conversations, through ID cards, NHS computer records and 42 days detention.

The closing remarks of Jenkins are worth recording in full. He states they are a lesson for MPs. The Orange Party would contend they are a lesson for us all. 

"The war on terror has been a wretched blind alley in British political history. It has revealed all that is worst in British government – its authoritarianism, its sloppiness and its unaccountability. Yet restoring the status quo ante will be phenomenally hard.

"In all my years of writing this column, from which I am standing down, I have been amazed at the spinelessness of Britain’s elected representatives in defending liberty and protesting against state arrogance. They appear as parties to the conspiracy of power. There have been outspoken judges, outspoken peers, even outspoken journalists. There have been few outspoken MPs. Those supposedly defending freedom are whipped into obedience. I find this ominous."

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Caught Red-Handed Cooking Crime Stats

Home office and police have been caught red-handed fiddling the crime figures to make them look good. Not content with using the discredited British Crime Survey to massage statistics, the home office has finally admitted police forces have been fixing figures for  serious violent crimes.

Policing minister Vernon Coaker said crime figures could still be trusted. The Orange Party wouldn't trust that statement as far as it could throw it.

Apparently some crimes that should have been classed as the very serious GBH were actually recorded as a minor assault.

So, while figures show overall violent crime keeps going down, the official total of most serious violent crime has actually gone up by 22%.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith, in a remarkable piece of New Labour gobbledegook said: 

"Let's be clear, this isn't crime that wasn't being recorded or wasn't being reported or wasn't being dealt with. It just wasn't being recorded in the category 'most serious violence. It's just that I wanted to focus particularly on most serious violence and therefore we needed to be sure that everybody in terms of categorising it was categorising it in the same way, so that we'd be able to track whether or not all the things that we're putting into place are making a difference."

New ways of counting were brought in by the home office as part of a focus on neighbourhood crime and as a way of pulling the wool over our eyes. 

And that opened the way for the shameful Orwellian publicity poster campaign which has been popping up all over the place, on buses and on patrol cars, trying to make us all feel safe, while streets erupt in violence. It can't be happening really because the posters say it isn't.

New Labour's much-favoured and totally meaningless British Crime Survey (BCS), a skewed and very limited survey which excludes youngsters, has been trotted out by the government for years to falsely justify their claim that they are cracking down on crime.

A meaningless survey is one thing, deliberately fixing the figures is quite another. Just blaming the police, who are forced to play the game with the government's obsession with targets and crime figures, is a cop-out. 

Blair's mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" is still coming back to haunt the government. After politicising the police, it is still getting up to every trick in the book to spin its way out of a decade of half-backed policies which has created the monster on our streets.

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Quick, Slip In Another Climb-Down

42 days, secret inquests and Sats. The climb-downs are coming thick and fast along with soaring inflation. With ministers thinking they're on a roll after Brown bankrolled the banks, it's a good time to bury bad news for the government but good news for schoolkids and civil liberties.

After the Lords booted out 42 days detention, Brown couldn't risk sticking to his guns nor could he lose face and throw in the towel. So up popped home secretary, Jacqui Smith, with the odd 'bill but no bill' solution. Totally bizarre - but Brown fudge won the day. 

Then the government dropped plans, in the same counter-terrorism bill, to order inquests to be held in private using the old chestnut of "on the grounds of national security."

The Oxfordshire coroner was clearly getting up the nose of the government as time and again he publicly blasted the MoD and ministers for equipment failures during inquests into Iraq and Afghanistan troop deaths. 

The solution was simple - just keep them all secret then no one would be any the wiser. 

42 days and the secret inquests have bitten the dust for now. But neither will go away for good. Popping the champagne is too early. It should be put on ice, which is what's happening with these deeply unpopular measures.

42 days will return in some form or other when the government feels there is a politically less risky climate. Another bill is already in the pipeline. There are plans to include those secret inquests in a bill on coroners reforms.

Now, instead of scrapping himself, schools minister, Ed Balls, is to scrap Sats tests for 14 year-olds in England, following this summer's marking shambles.

All this on a day where, back in the real economy, inflation today hit home above the 5% mark, even using the government's own manipulated CPI figures.

What next to get buried in the dust?  How about ID cards? 

The government was playing politics with people's civil liberties the first time round and is just doing it again. Burdening children with a testing culture was playing with young people's minds. Masking the true rise in inflation, is playing with the effect on the real economy 

As has been observed elsewhere, it's all leaving a nasty taste. 

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