2 Comments July 8th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
How much does the Labour Party hate us? One hell of a lot if they can even consider making Harriet Harman leader!
She’s the worst possible alternative to Gordon Brown. Despite being English and middle-class, in alternative to Brown’s dour Scottishness, she is more likely than anyone to alienate the inhabitants of Middle England that Labour needs to attract/hold on to in order to stay in government.
The only real, logical, alternative to Brown as Prime Minister is Jack Straw. David Miliband is simply not stupid enough to want it right now. He’s not interested until after the election, and the opportunity for renewal is possible. So only Straw has the stature and experience - and name recognition - to have any chance as PM.
Of course, as a Conservative, I want Brown to stay on. He’s doing such a good job [for us]!
Add a comment June 18th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
One in five of all FOI requests are turned down. 20%! 7,000 FOI requests turned down point blank.
And only 63% were classed as fully “resolvable”. So the other 17% must have been regarded as only partly answerable, for whatever reason. Knowing this government, probably because they just didn’t have a clue what the answer was.
Freedom of information - the concept, ignoring the Act - should mean that anything that is not cost prohibitive to fund out or top secret should be released if requested. And this release should be as quick as possible. In fact, why shouldn’t all of this information be freely available anyway?
That Jack Straw can blithely state that the “flow of information between the Government and the people is fundamental to a vigorous and robust democracy” and yet reside over such a terrible record in actually complying with Freedom of Information shows doubleplusgood doublethink.
Add a comment November 25th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
Jack Straw is right that the current crises do not constitute Labour’s Black Wednesday. It has not reached the position whereby it is as bad in reality or perception as Wednesday 16 September 1992.
Yet.
This is not New Labour’s Black Wednesday nor their Winter of Discontent. It has not yet reached that level. But it certainly is not all that far off it. If this current issue over the posting of sensitive information of CDs carries on and the Northern Rock fiasco continues, it could very easily develop into it.
As much as I would like it to have, Labour’s Black Wednesday has yet to materialise. Jack Straw is right when he says that “[t]he idea that this an equivalent to Black Wednesday is utter nonsense.” At the moment.
Source: BBC
3 Comments September 27th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
Justice Secretary Jack Straw says that
The justice system must not only work on the side of people who do the right thing as good citizens but also be seen to work on their side.
Yes, it should. And he is right to say that
Enforcing the law, securing justice, is not just a matter for ‘them’ — the courts, the prisons, the probation service, the police; but for all of us.
But why then didn’t he do anything about it in the four years [1997-2001] in which he was Home Secretary? After all, it was during his tenure as Home Secretary than Tony Martin, the man on whom much of this is based, was convicted of murder [reduced to manslaughter on appeal].
It is during the last decade that people have become increasingly shy of becoming a “have-a-go hero” because of the way in which Labour have consistently undermined them. Criminals have been given rights under the law way beyond that which belong to the standard law-abiding person. It is under Labour that it has been possible for a burglar to sue a house owner for injuries sustained whilst robbing them. It is under Labour that the police force has been reduced to form-filling all day, and not preventing or even properly investigating crime. It is because of Labour that people are wary of enforcing the law because they are as likely, or at least feel that they are as likely, to be charged as the criminal they apprehend.
Jack Straw can apprehend criminals like he has said to have done three times because he isn’t going to get dragged up before court for doing so. But for anyone else, it doesn’t hold true. He claims that he was “always uneasy” about the government not doing anything about protecting those citizens who try to uphold the law, but why then didn’t he do anything about it? He was Home Secretary for four years, during the period when this all began. He is to blame for it.
They have consistently done nothing about it, and rejected Conservative calls to do so. It is all well and good for Straw to try and fix it - but he has to acknowledge his, and the last decade of Labour government’s, huge role in causing the problem in the first place. Until they accept that it is them who caused it, it is all just meaningless rhetoric.
Source: BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent
