Brown's brisk bumbling

Another day, another dollop...of humble pie for Gordon Brown, forced to abandon his flat-rate daily allowance in order to appease his mutinous backbenchers. Ever since his bizarre home movie I've been wondering why Brown wants to push through reform of MPs expenses quite so quickly...

..and then cynicalHighlander brought this Daily Mail article to my attention on the Beeb's Blether with Brian blog: Love cheat MPs on 'suicide watch' as expense claims threaten to expose affairs.

It makes for an interesting read. If even half of it is true there could well be a few by-elections for Brown to deal with over the next few months.

And in light of these claims it makes perfect sense that Brown would seek to rush Sir Christopher Kelly's inquiry into expenses reform. Or when Kelly refuses, quickly cobble together some half-baked proposals without consulting his own party or the opposition parties. And when both of those fail, back down in order that something, anything(!), can be voted through. Even though the Kelly inquiry is still continuing.

When the full horror of Labour's gorging on expenses emerges Brown calculates that he simply must be able to say that he's already started reforming the system, even if only in a rushed and cack-handed fashion.

Outrage at treatment of Shirkers

Exciting news from Westminster tonight. The Labour government have been defeated in a vote on the ongoing discrimination in favour of the Shirkers. At issue is the right of Shirkers to remain resident in the UK and to claim morbidly obese pensions and porcine expenses. The government position has been that all of the Shirkers will continue to enjoy special rights and privileges but without assuming any of the responsibilities that their position normally entails.

Following the government's humiliating defeat legislation must surely now be introduced to put an end to this immoral abuse of the nation's generosity. 350 Shirkers are currently on active disservice, many having served themselves loyally since 1997.

At PMQs Nick Clegg, barely able to contain his spleen, excoriated: "If someone is prepared to lie to this country, surely they deserve to leave this country". Joanna Lumley is very nearly 63.

UPDATE:

According to the LibDems list of rebels on the BBC News webpage, none of the Labour MPs from Scotland voted against the government. Not a single one.

101 uses for Iain Gray: #65 Radiation absorber

Well you learn something new every day. Apparently the gray is the SI unit of "absorbed radiation dose due to ionizing radiation". To be precise, 1 gray = the absorption of 1 joule of energy, in the form of ionizing radiation, by 1 kg of matter.

Now, since Iain Gray has been made redundant by Jim Murphy, surely his time would be better employed swimming up and down the Gare Loch absorbing all the radiation our marvellous nuclear subs spit out. Indeed, as well as helping clean up the environment he could also provide a timely boost to tourism. People would come from far and wide to see this increasingly endangered Gray wail.

Poor Phorm at the Home Office

Another damning email exchange emerges from Westminster, this time from the ever-incompetent Jacqui Smith's beat: Home Office 'colluded with Phorm'.

For those of you less versed in geek-speak Phorm is a system for placing targeted adverts on certain websites that you might visit, based upon collecting and analysing your browsing history. One controversial aspect of Phorm is that you might be deemed to have signed up for this "service" simply by agreeing to your ISP's terms and conditions of use. Much more about Phorm at the Wikipedia link above, including mention of BT's secret trials of the system (that's British Telecom, not Brian Taylor blether-fans!).

Following a Freedom of Information request an email exchange has been released that appears to show mandarins at the Home Office asking Phorm for advice on whether their "service" is legal or not. Baroness Miller is quoted by the Beeb as saying:

"The fact the Home Office asks the very company they are worried is actually falling outside the laws whether the draft interpretation of the law is correct is completely bizarre."

Cynics among you might well wonder whether this could be a backdoor means of resurrecting the mother of all databases to track every phone call, email and website that we all visit. Personally I don't think the government are that competent though, looks more like a damning indictment of standards in Whitehall than anything more sinister.

Poll results: Rate Darling's budget

A - Magnificent 0 votes
B - Mighty fine 0
C - Middling 0
D - Meagre 0
E - Moribund 3
F - Murphy 15

So 15 out of 18 voters thought the budget was terrific...only kidding! I think we can safely assume that visitors to Brigadoon were unimpressed with Darling's (mis-)calculations. I just wish I'd added Mendacious as a category...