Given her husband’s viewing habits, I do hope she washed it first…

UPDATE

No, that joke does not mean that I believe the porn claim was the most important bad thing about Jacqui Smith. It wasn’t even the worst thing about her expenses.

I have been working more or less full time for five years now against the systematic abuse of human rights and rollback of Civil Liberties in the UK. This ultra authoritarianism was by no means initiated by Jacqui Smith, and I fear it will not in the least be changed by her departure, unless by some miracle we get Bob Marshall Andrews or Andrew Mackinlay as Home Secretary (and they are about as likely to be appointed as me).

But this news does bring some light at the end of the tunnel, in that it is plainly a symptom of New Labour’s disintegration, which is proceeding in a remarkable fashion. I think a stong part of the public mood is indeed a dislike of the over-mighty state. I remain optimistic that I will not ultimately bequeath my children a country in which liberty is disappearing, despite this terrible ten years.

On the very rare occasions I see a copy of the Independent, I am always vaguely perplexed that it hasn’t gone out of business yet. Any paper that can employ Robert Fisk, but still be mind-numbingly dull, is doing everything wrong. Almost all of its journalists are third rate. Try to name off the top of your head something, not by Robert Fisk, that you first learnt of as sourced to the Independent?

But it is the truly abysmal quality of its columnists which I find positively enraging. They seem to be a collection of people the editor might have met at a social function at a minor public school in Surrey.

Bruce Anderson is the worst kind of saloon bar bore, convinced of his own authority. I am not a violent man. If Tony Blair were to walk into the room now, I would merely harangue him vigorously. But something about Anderson’s immense air of self-satisfaction leads me to wish to know just how spongey it would feel to dri ekistans-notorious-dictator-and-married-into-one-of-the-nations-wealthiest-families-but-her-bitter-divorce-could-derail-americas-war-on-terror-now-she-tells-her-story-for-the-first-time-578321.html”>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/she-is-the-jetsetting-daughter-of-uzbekistans-notorious-dictator-and-married-into-one-of-the-nations-wealthiest-families-but-her-bitter-divorce-could-derail-americas-war-on-terror-now-she-tells-her-story-for-the-first-time-578321.html

That was just disgusting, and Dejevsky and the editor should have been sacked. What next:

” At home with Eva Braun. Is she just a misunderstood girl who bakes pretzels for the man who loves her?”

But for sheer empty-headed uselessness I give you Sarah Sands. This column is quite possibly the worst bit of writing anybody has ever actually paid for:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-when-the-going-gets-tough-the-cheap-get-going-1693505.html

Who would think that worth publishing? Who is she shagging, or related to? What a column:

“Graduate employment is very high this year. The thing my wealthy friends do is to work for nothing for a few years, to worm their way into the company. But that might be hard for the poor. Poor dears, whay do they do? Another of my friends – did I mention he was very wealthy – hadn’t got a job, so he used some of his money to set up a language college and employ poor people as tutors. Clever him!”

“We’ve got pots of money, so my teenage son and his friends can afford villa holidays all by themselves! But villa owners won’t hire out to teenagers! That is a major social problem”.

I don’t blame Sands – she plainly can’t help being an unpleasant drivelling arsehole. But what fuckwit of an Editor thinks that is worth commissioning? Absolutely anybody can immediately find literally thousands of more interesting and apposite articles, for free, on blogs.

Finally I bring you the creepy Dominic Lawson, full time propagandist for the Security Services. This family failure had so many advantages in life, that had he the slightest hint of talent he would have been doing something more high-powered that feeding the MI6 line to a failing newspaper.

A great man of the people, our Dominic. He thinks that what people want to read about today is jolly anecdote concerning Lord Lamont quoting Winnie the Pooh at the Garrick Club:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-politics-should-be-more-like-a-gentlemens-club-not-less-1694538.html

I appeared on a Radio progamme with Lawson a few years ago. He said that he was reliably informed by government sources that I was not telling the truth and that the UK did not receive intelligence from torture. He also said that I had no evidence that the intelligence from Uzbekistan came from torture, or that the CIA was employing torture.

The British government have finally admitted they use intelligence from torture, as shown in Phillippe Sands’ and my own evidence sessions before parliament. The US government has admitted the CIA was employing torture.

It is also thus proved that Dominic Lawson is just a paid liar for the establishment.

With its clear editorial line against the Iraq War – and I should mention Joan Smith as a decent columnist – the Independent had a chance to make it. But employing a gang of rambling nutters as columnists, apparently in the interests of political balance, has destined it for the bin. I do hope that other editors will learn the lesson from the fate of the Indie, and not employ any of these idiots.