The New Labour Torture and War Crimes Party is squealing at the boundary commission changes. I hate their rank hypocrisy. Anyone with the remotest interest in psephology knows that a combination of shire constituencies being historically larger, and recent drift from city centres, gives New Labour an advantage over the vicious Tories. I do not favour First Past the Post at all, but the electorate hates Nick Clegg so much that FPTP has become beloved of the people as the best defence against him. Fairly equal constituency sizes is a necessary feature for FPTP to have even a smidgeon of validity.

New Labour’s argument that they should have less electors per constituency because their geographical areas contain more illegal immigrants and persons too thick to register to vote, is hilarious. We are now to take into account in the democratic process those who do not bother to register, let alone vote? Actually most of those “ghost” people are a hypothetical posit by government statisticians, because they do not fill in the census either. You can surmise their existence in other ways. I posted about Stratford earlier. Did you know that in Stratford and in Tower Hamlets, either there are many people there who officially do not exist, or they produce over half as much more sewerage per person than anyone else? Anyway, I digress.

Anyone can register to vote. the “Transient population” argument does not wash because there is no longer a single annual registration – here in Thanet the register is updated once a month, for example. If you have chosen not to be a part of the political process – which should be a right not to be part – you do not count in it and you should not count in it. You cannot be psychically chalked up as a supporter of Harriet fucking Harman.

The advantage to New Labour over the Conservatives was about 5% at the 2010 election.

Here is how many votes it takes to elect one MP:

DUP Nasty Proddie Bigots 21,027
New Labour War Criminal and Torturer 33,858
Sinn Fein Ex-Murderers 34,388
Tory Vicious Sneering Bastards 34,979
SDLP Rather Nice People 36,990
Alliance Sickly Nice People 42,762
Plaid Cymru Ineffectual Quasi-Nationalists 55,131
SNP Hooray! 81,898
Lib Dem Lying Two Faced Traitor Clegg 119,934
Green Very Nice But Need To Eat More Meat 285,612

Not forgetting, with no MPs

UKIP Like BNP With O Levels infinity 919,471 votes
BNP Hitler Loving Scum infinity 564,321 votes
Ulster Conservatives Like DUP With O Levels infinity 102,361 votes
Respect Green Leotard Tendency infinity 33,251 votes

Can’t wait for details of the Scottish boundary proposals.

duffieldminute

mcDonald

Something is, obviously to anybody, missing from this document series and something else is also missing obviously to anybody who has been a Whitehall civil servant.

For earlier documents in the series see here. But the crucial missing documents relate to these two above, labeled duffieldminute and mcDonald.

What is, obviously to anybody, missing is a communication from the PUS (head of the Diplomatic Service Sir Michael Jay, now Lord Jay for services to torture) to Jack Straw. Jack Straw’s Private Secretary minutes “The Foreign Secretary agrees with the PUS that you handled this very well. Thank you.”

Where is the communication from the PUS to Straw saying that Duffield handled this meeting with me, about complicity in torture, very well? We do not have it. This despite repeated Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act requests from me for all the documents. I have been told that some documents were withheld on grounds of national security. What did Lord Torture-Jay say to Jack War-Criminal-Straw, that is still being withheld by Hague to protect Straw?

The next part is that which anyone who has worked in Whitehall will understand. The Duffield minute is a record of an internal meeting between FCO officials. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of internal meetings between FCO officials every single day. Some will be on major policy questions, like the future of the EU or global warming. Yet only one or two minutes of internal meetings a day will be deemed important enough to be put into the Secretary of State’s box. An internal FCO meeting solely about matters in Tashkent will probably never have been selected before.

What was so important about this little internal meeting that it commanded the full attention of Jack Straw and Lord Jay?
Anybody who has ever worked in Whitehall will know that it is next to impossible that this minute was simply put before Jack Straw unexpectedly like this.

One of two things must be true. Either Jack Straw was fully up to speed and had been extensively briefed before about intelligence from torture in Tashkent and my attitude to it, or the Duffield minute was put up behind a substantive submission explaining the background. Either way, vital documents are being hidden concerning Jack Straw’s involvement in the policy of receiving intelligence from torture.

It is worth remembering that the FCO did not give any of the documents above to the Gibson Inquiry until I did.

The world’s largest shoplifting centre has been opened next to the Olympic stadium in Stratford. This will be the most enjoyable epic fail by the Australians since the Ashes.

I walked a few months ago along a street in nearby Leyton, off Francis Rd. Something caught my attention, and I started looking at tax discs. Of sixty two cars parked on one side of the street, twenty one had no valid tax disc. I would bet that at least that many had no valid insurance. All of these cars were within two hundred yards of Francis Rd police station.

The Olympics have cost £20 billion we don’t have, and in three years time the site will be a mouldering white elephant. The flats of the Olympic village, hopefully destined for yuppie accommodation, are less attractive than the nastier flats of Moscow or, still worse, the ones they have just demolished in Dundee. Moving West Ham just up the road from Upton Park to the new Olympic Stadium will have no net economic effect I can see.

I would be willing to bet, from talking to locals, that the thousands of people it is being announced are to be employed in the new shopping centre include the highest percentage of security staff and store detectives in the world. It is still not going to work.

More shopping malls is not the answer to our economic problems. This is madness.