Eideard

Looks like the Brits – and especially the Tories – are getting worried about for-real devolution, this time. This is a fiery topic with old mates of mine in Progressive politics in the UK coming down on both sides of the question. As a “child” of the Highland Clearances, I’m a supporter of sovereignty for Scotland. Causes more pub rows than an Auld Firm derby.

A fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain before the 2005 London Tube and bus bombings, a former Labour minister with close links to the intelligence services has admitted.

Kim Howells blamed “political correctness” for fostering a situation in which dozens of extremists being sent to fight the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed this week how terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum.

According to leaked detainee files from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, at least 35 detainees were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain. Mr Howells, a former foreign office minister and chairman of the influential Commons intelligence and security committee, blamed “political correctness” which meant that the extremists and their views were not challenged…

Britain ignored repeated warnings to stop granting asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in other countries for terrorism offences before the 7/7 bombings.

According to the cable, also obtained by WikiLeaks, the politician asked: “Did the English consider the risks of allowing Londonistan to develop? The British thought that sheltering terrorists was a good solution, but they did not realise that one can never align oneself with the devil, and they did precisely that for years and years…”

Shake hands with the devil who wants to kill you.

Enda Kenny campaigning in Donegal

Irish people are voting on Friday in what is arguably the most important general election in the republic’s history.

The electorate of more than 2 million will be sending representatives of a new government back to Brussels early next month to renegotiate the terms of the international bailout package that gave Ireland more than €80bn.

Enda Kenny, leader of the main opposition party, Fine Gael, is almost certain to be elected taoiseach and is already planning to travel next week to Brussels to meet his counterparts in the European People’s party bloc.

The meeting will pave the way for an EU finance summit later in March during which a number of debt-stricken countries, including Ireland, will attempt to persuade fellow Europeans to lower the interest payments on the loans.

Up until the final day of campaigning, Kenny and his party have been resisting all calls to reveal who they will share power with after the election. Kenny has also declined to give advice to Fine Gael voters as to where they should place their second, third, fourth and other preferences. Ireland elects its 166 members of the Irish parliament on the single transferable vote system in 43 multi-member constituencies…

Despite a surge in support, Fine Gael is unlikely to reach the magic figure of 83 seats that would allow the party to govern with an overall majority. Over recent days, relationships have been improving between Fine Gael and the Irish Labour party, Kenny’s most likely coalition partners.

Labour has complained of last-minute dirty tricks directed at the party by the Catholic right. Anti-abortion pressure groups have covered lamp-posts along O’Connell Street, Dublin’s major thoroughfare, with stickers claiming: “A vote for Labour is a vote for abortion.” Labour is the only one of the major Dail parties to take a pro-choice stance on abortion, which is still illegal in Ireland…

Despite several unresolved disagreements between Fine Gael and Labour – not least over the issue of abortion – most commentators and bookmakers seem to think the two parties are most likely to form the next coalition with a 30-plus majority in the Dail.

When you have an international theme following 14th Century ideology, you needn’t wonder at the consistency of reactionary political tactics. Whether you’re in Kansas or Dublin the game’s the same even if the name isn’t.

Taking away women’s rights to choice are a pretty consistent piece of that ideology – along with opposition to practices as modern, say, as the 19th Century – like contraception.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Barclays Bank has been forced to admit it paid just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn of profits.

The admission stunned politicians and tax campaigners. It was revealed on the eve of a day of protests planned against the high street banks by activists from UK Uncut, a group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and corporate tax avoidance.

The Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who lobbied Barclays’ chief executive, Bob Diamond, to reveal the tax paid by the bank, described the figure – just 1% of its 2009 profits – as “shocking”.

The current rate of corporation tax in the UK is 28%, although global banks such as Barclays – which has hundreds of overseas subsidiaries, including many in tax havens – do not generate all of their profits in their domestic market.

Max Lawson, of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, said: “This is proof that banks live in a parallel universe to the rest of us, paying billions in bonuses and unhampered by the inconvenience of paying tax.

“If banks paid their fair share we could avoid the worst of the cuts and help those hit hardest by the financial crisis they did nothing to cause.”

Just to give you an idea of how “tough” the Blair Labour government was on big corporations.

Sounds like home to an American.

Gold is good

MPs have asked ministers to explain why $3million from the international development budget was spent on the Pope’s UK visit in September.

They queried the “surprising” transfer from the Department for International Development (DFID) to the Foreign Office and what it was spent on…

Pope Benedict’s four-day visit in September was estimated at the time to have cost Whitehall departments $16million…

MPs on the international development select committee said they were surprised to discover the transfer…while examining DFID’s annual accounts, money the committee said was “supposed to be for overseas development aid”…

A DFID spokesman said the department was one of several which part-funded the Pope’s visit.

He added: “Our contribution recognised the Catholic Church’s role as a major provider of health and education services in developing countries…

Labour said…the government “shouldn’t be siphoning off DFID funds to subsidise Foreign Office expenditure on state visits”, said Harriet Harman, the party’s deputy leader and international development spokeswoman.

“DFID money should be to tackle poverty and global inequality, not to support Foreign Office diplomacy.”

Sounds like an appropriate criticism. Here in the states, we remain cynical over lying politicians and tame bureaucrats robbing Peter to pay off Paul.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to be recalled to give evidence a second time to the Iraq Inquiry.

He is one of a number of key figures, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, asked to appear before the Chilcot committee again…

The inquiry said it wanted “more detail” in some key areas…

The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Nicholas Witchell said it was not clear why Mr Blair had been asked to appear once more, but there must be significant details that the inquiry wished to clarify following its analysis of documentary evidence and a number of private hearings over the summer…

The committee has been holding hearings since November, in which it has questioned a host of former Labour Cabinet ministers, senior military commanders, civil servants and diplomats.

A number of former government lawyers have argued that the invasion was unlawful…

Sir John has stressed the final report, not expected to be published before March, will be “full, thorough, evidence-based and frank”.

“We are independent of government and will not shy away from criticising if we find fault or if we conclude that errors have been made. We are determined to produce a report that will be useful to future governments,” he added.

Anyone ever going to depose George W. Bush under oath? Not that he wouldn’t offer the same lies, half-truths and rationales that continue to be the heart of American foreign policy.

Do you think the United States Congress or the White House – now or in the future – would have sufficient integrity, courage, to peer behind the barbed-wire closet door at the former emperor’s collection of patent leather lies?

Phil Woolas, the former immigration minister, has been thrown out of Parliament and the Labour Party after breaking electoral law by making up damaging allegations about his main general election opponent.

Two High Court judges made the historic decision to overturn the result of May’s ballot in Mr Woolas’s constituency, the first such ruling for 99 years, and order a by-election.

The ruling means Mr Woolas will be barred from standing for public office for three years, and he could face criminal charges after a file on the case was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

He said he would fight the court’s decision but Labour immediately disowned him for “telling lies” and said it would not support his appeal. The result of the election in Oldham and Saddleworth — which Mr Woolas won by just 103 votes — had been challenged by Elwyn Watkins, the defeated Liberal Democrat who accused the MP of exploiting racial tensions in the area by falsely claiming Mr Watkins was courting Islamic extremists.

Mr Justice Nigel Teare and Mr Justice Griffith Williams ruled that Mr Woolas had breached electoral law by knowingly making false statements about his opponent.

As well as declaring the election result void, they ordered Mr Woolas to pay Mr Watkins’s legal costs.

Can you imagine a ruling like this one coming in the United States?

Even when our congressional whizbangs get round to fiddling with a possible sanction again some of the corruption that passes for culture – it takes months and years to bring the process to conclusion.

I categorized this post under crime, health and politics. The first two are obvious: illegal addiction produces crime; addiction of most kinds produces ill health. Politics – because political hacks both sides of the pond consider the first two questions only for what they mean when it comes to reelection.

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the UK by a considerable margin, beating heroin and crack cocaine into second and third place, according to an authoritative study published today which will reopen calls for the drugs classification system to be scrapped and a concerted campaign launched against drink.

Led by the sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, the study says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, alongside heroin and crack cocaine.

Today’s paper, published by the respected Lancet medical journal, will be seen as a challenge to the government to take on the fraught issue of the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs, which proved politically damaging to Labour…

Today’s study offers a more complex analysis that seeks to address the 2007 criticisms. It examines nine categories of harm that drugs can do to the individual “from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships” and seven types of harm to others. The maximum possible harm score was 100 and the minimum zero.

Overall, alcohol scored 72 – against 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. The most dangerous drugs to their individual users were ranked as heroin, crack and then crystal meth. The most harmful to others were alcohol, heroin and crack in that order…

The authors write: “Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm. They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harm is a valid and necessary public health strategy.”

Our governments – and the parliamentary hacks fiddling with the same questions – only seem to care about religious morality. Not the value of that morality. Though a far cry from systematic examinations of ethics, there is an odd bit of value in some of the outdated maundering. But, what counts about morality to our politicians is how many votes will it get at election time.

Scientists have offered yet another reasoned analysis to politicians. What’s the likelihood of anyone listening?

Two Red Devils together after the Labour Party conference
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

New Labour leader Ed Miliband does not believe in God, he has said.

Mr Miliband had previously said his religious views were a “private matter”, and his declaration means two of the three leaders of major British political parties are self-proclaimed atheists.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg also confirmed he does not believe shortly after being named Liberal Democrat leader, while David Cameron last year said religious faith was “part of who I am” but admitted he did not go to church regularly…

In an interview on Radio 5 Live, Mr Miliband was asked by presenter Nicky Campbell: “Do you believe in God?”

The Labour leader replied: “I don’t believe in God personally, but I have great respect for those people who do. Different people have different religious views in this country. The great thing is that, whether we have faith or not, we are by and large very tolerant of people whatever their view…”

Despite spin doctor Alastair Campbell’s famous comment to reporters that “we don’t do God”, Mr Blair has confirmed since leaving power that his religious faith was “hugely important” to his premiership. He said he did not speak publicly about his belief while in office out of fear voters would think him a “nutter”.

Since leaving Downing Street, he has converted to Roman Catholicism, and in his recent memoir, A Journey, he wrote: “I have always been more interested in religion than politics.”

Confirming that he is a nutter.

They certainly wouldn’t be elected to any office requiring intellectual honesty, knowledge of science or insight into history. Fortunately, none of these is apparently needed for Congress or the White House.

Remember, when the Yanks say, “Jump!” – you ask “how high?”
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Plans by the British government to make significant cuts in defense spending have spurred concerns among American military experts about Britain’s ability to carry out its role as the United States’ most dependable ally.

The Brits used to use the term “batman” to describe a similar purpose within their imperial army. Americans are more likely to say “flunkey”.

A wrenching government spending review has pitted Britain’s army against its navy, spawned a series of leaks to the British media and raised the question of whether the military that emerges from the budget cuts — expected to be 10 percent to 20 percent of current outlays — will be a strategically agile force that can join the United States on major combat operations.

American and British officials said that they did not expect any cutbacks to curtail Britain’s capabilities to fight in Afghanistan over the next five years…

The ten or fifteen years after that might be a problem, though.

Mr. Fox told reporters later that, after any cuts, the British military would be able to respond to a broad array of threats and retain capabilities particularly valued by the Pentagon. He identified those as Britain’s Special Forces, its nuclear deterrent, its participation in the Joint Strike Fighter program and its ability to deploy substantial forces when needed.

While they joust with Israel to see who gets to be the 51st state, the various wings of the British government are working like little beavers to assure Uncle Sugar they need to stay on the death and destruction payroll.