Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Labour protest

A Downing Street spokesman said today:

"We are appalled by the continuing violence in Gaza and reiterate our call to Israel and Hamas for an immediate ceasefire to prevent further loss of innocent life.

"In his discussions today with Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas, the Prime Minister has also pressed for full, unimpeded and urgent access for medical teams: a humanitarian breathing space. We are in close contact with the UN to assess how best this support can reach those who need it.

"There is no military solution to this situation. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary remain in constant touch with international and regional partners to establish the parameters for a sustainable peace. We must redouble the international effort to ensure that both Israel and Palestine have the land, rights and security to live in peace."

 

Alongwith several other MPs I have signed the following letter which has been sent to national newspapers

Israel's continuing massive military strikes on Gaza are an outrage that the international community must not allow to continue. Palestinian rocket attacks which traumatise the lives of communities in Southern Israel are also utterly unacceptable. Both sides must cease fire.

Israel's actions are disproportionate and counter productive to achieving either security for the people of Israel or peace in the Middle East. Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have warned that "targeting of civilians and of medical facilities is a breach of international humanitarian law. The targets chosen by the Israeli military include also clearly civilian installations."  

Gaza is one of the poorest and most densely populated places on earth. For the last two years, the blockade and previous Israeli strikes had already disrupted electricity supplies and access to clean water. Even before the current attack, Gaza's health system was near collapse. Hospitals are short of medicines, blood and essential equipment. Only half of Gaza's 58 ambulances are functioning.  

We call on the international community, and especially the High Contracting Parities to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to intervene to stop the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. We call for an immediate ceasefire by all parties and for an embargo on the supply of military equipment to both sides. The international community must also assert unambiguously that there is no military route to peace in the Middle East and redouble its efforts to create a secure and independent state of Palestine alongside a secure and independent Israel.

 

Racing to decline

As a once year horse race attender, I cannot pontificate.

But the sport is worried at the possible withdrawal of coverage by the BBC. The swarm of helicopters descending on the Chepstow course yesterday is eloquent evidence of that they is a lot of money in the sport.

The crisp freezing weather and the sunshine contributed to great day's spec spectacle for the Welsh Grand National. For the first time ever the day started with the singing of the Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau. The Llywydd of the Welsh Assembly was a guest. Is this an attempt to give the sport a strong Welsh identity a mile from the English border.

The BBC are reducing their coverage starting with a possible pull-out from Chepstow next year. It would be a crippling blow. As a spectator sport it does not have the variety, or obvious skills of other sports. As the only Welsh horse racing course with a creditable record of success, Chepstow may need to call on all its friends.

Future bleak

The credit crunch is hitting regional newspapers hard.

Their main income is from advertising of cars, houses and jobs vacant. All are in swift decline and forcing redundancies on local south Wales papers.  There was  a time when the Gwent paper the Argus proudly proclaimed that it was owned and printed in the county.

Alas now, there is no local sentiment. Decisions are all on the financial bottom line. If that does not deliver, the papers are in peril. The Internet is also undermining the raison d'être of papers. I routinely now run throughout he headlines of all major papers in ten minutes on the web. Web visibility does not deliver the advertisers.

There is a lessening need to buy papers. The pincer movement from the crunch and the Internet is perhaps the greatest threat ever to regional papers. Love or hate them, we will sorely miss them if they go.

Eternal conflict

Today witnessed another sickening twist in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 Tonight's picture of broken bodies and bombed victims in agony arouses anger and despair. 

Can anything ever be done?  Tony Blair has taken on the task of mediation of what he admits is an intractable problem. I have visited Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip on officials visits and on a family holiday. After the Oslo agreements there was real hope that a peace settlement could be achieved. On a visit to Gaza shortly after wards, I was shocked by the third world conditions of the refugee camps situated a few miles from the five star luxury of  Israeli hotels.

Then came the worst blow with the assassination of Yitshak Rabin by fanatics. The divides within both communities are deep and deadly as the ancient enmities of Jews and Arabs.

It took courage for the Israelis to leave their settlements in the Gaza strip. Their presence was always provocative and self-defeating. But the gesture was hailed as a victory by Hamas and an excuse to increase the rain of rocket fire on Israeli homes.

The hated wall that is blighting Arab life and the still continuing land grab of Arab land are deepening hatreds. A new invasion of Gaza will be as bloody and as doomed as the last invasion of Lebanon. All the hopes that have arisen in the past 50 years are now in ruins. 

Many similar ethnic conflicts in the world have run their course and peace prevails. After decades of repeated failures of peace and military initiatives the outlook in the Middle East  has rarely looked more dangerous than now. 

With Hamas on one side and a re-elected Netanyahu on the other, peace will be more elusive than ever. 

Good News

The Negativity bias is fiercely rampant in this holiday’s media. Whoever comes up with the gloomiest forecast of financial hell get the headline of the day.

Not in recession

A ‘good news’ story that the UK is NOT yet in recession metaphosed into a bad news story two days ago. The 15 countries that use the euro are officially in a recession, the European Union said, as their economies shrank for a second straight quarter because of the world financial crisis and sinking demand. The bad line was that our economy had slipped by 0.6 instead of the expected 0.5%. That’s half of one per cent. Not exactly Armageddon. But the drip, drip, of apocalyptic headlines read in funeral tones by newsreaders spreads the contagion of financial depression.

Yes hard times are ahead but deepening the gloom accelerates the process.

Bargain Pound

The value of the pound is already bringing shoppers here from the Euro Zone. It makes our manufactured goods and other exports of irresistible value that will help to reveres falling order books. This is the stimulus that our companies need. Holidays booking in the UK will boom from UK citizens and those from the Euro zone. Their holiday deposit will stimulate c confidence.

Supreme world hope President-elect Barack Obama is the man Americans say they admire most in the world, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll published today. 32% of those questioned said Obama was the man they most admired compared with 5% for President George W Bush who came in second. Defeated Republican presidential candidate John McCain came in third with 3%. Hillary Clinton leads the list of most admired women with 20%, according to the poll.

That means the burial of the war-mongering, global warming denying, greed driven, bribe-addicted, immoral creed of Bush and Cheney. Defeated, derided and now loathed, Bush’s final days of president will be ones of ridicule and contempt.

Tops

Comforting to see that the splendidly innocent Walliace and Gromit had the top Christmas audience. In spite of vast promotion and spin on all main bulletins for 24 hours beforehand by the palace PR team, the monarch's message was down in the ratings.

 Channel Four buckled and did not broadcast their alternative message at the planned time. How can it be an alternative when it is broadcast three hours late?

For some mysterious reason the PASC broadcasts on 'Good Government'  on BBC Parliament did not figure in ratings. Some mistake there.

Independently splendid

As far as I know, only one media outlet has headlined the American takeover of Sellafield and Aldermaston. The Independent today printed the following letter, which underlines this national act of humiliation.

"Your report "Secret nuclear sell-off storm" (20 December) indicates a watershed has been passed in the final sale of part of the UK military nuclear infrastructure to the United States.

In fact, the UK atomic establishment has been in bed with the US on nuclear weapons development since the US Congress authorised an amendment in 1959 to the United States-United Kingdom Mutual Defense (spelt with an "s" even in the official British version) Agreement on Atomic Energy Matters, signed a year earlier. It permitted the US to share with us nuclear weapons expertise, technology and "fissile" nuclear explosive materials such as plutonium and enriched uranium.

Along with the Nassau Agreement on Polaris nuclear WMDs, signed in December 1962, this has forged a nuclear-sharing agreement that gives the lie to successive Government assertions that "our" nuclear weapons are in any way "independent". What is really interesting about this sale is it is the final piece in an atomic jigsaw that gives private American companies total control over the Trident WMD system, from design cradle to dismantlement grave.

In July, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) agreed to contract out to a consortium led by US engineering company URS Washington Group, the top-tier management of the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, formerly owned and operated by the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). As The Independent uniquely reported at the time ("Sellafield has public 'blank cheque'," 4 August), this multibillion-pound deal left the insurance liabilities to reside with UK taxpayer, and the profits available for repatriation to the US; this deal was done without proper reference to Parliament.

This led to a political row that has festered in Westminster through the autumn, culminating in an explosive debate held on 19 November, led by Labour back-bench MP Paul Flynn, who strongly attacked his own Government for circumventing Parliamentary oversight.

Now the same government has tried a similar trick with the Atomic Weapons Establishment, cutting MPs out of the loop. When MPs return to Parliament in early January, they should demand an immediate ministerial statement, and subsequent interrogation, on this latest sell-out to unaccountable American companies.

Dr David Lowry

former director, European Proliferation Information Centre, Stoneleigh, Surrey

Branson’s Babble

Richard Branson pontificates on the NHS. The first question is, does he or his family use it?  If not, what qualifies him to speak on behalf of the Patients’ Association. Should he not be speaking up the group such as the Victims of BUPA?

As always when he steps outside his own area of business he is wrong. In 1993 I made my first Commons’ speech about MRSA. The subject was a novel one at the time but the tiny numbers of cases were multiplying rapidly. It was difficult scary subject and I took care not to be too alarmist or add unnecessarily to the anxieties of hospital patients.

I contributed  to a television programme on the MRSA contracted by my friend Cardiff journalist the late John O’Sullivan in 1998. John later won substantial damages because of the lack of proper care he had in a Cardiff hospital.

In the 2005 General Election Newport Tories tried to cynically play of the fears on local people on MRSA. They did not mention that Gwent had the lowest incidence of the disease in Wales and the percentage of Welsh cases was lower than England’s. 

The Patients’ Association represents very few people. It was in ruins before Claire Rainier took over the reins many years ago. Now Richard Branson gets headlines for a foolish statement because he is Richard Branson.

PM Thatcher gave him the job of clearing up the UK’s litter. There were a few headlines and the nothing happened. MPs on the Transport Select Committee fondly remember his lamentable appearance before them on Rail Privatisation. He was asked how he planned to improve the service with Virgin Trains. He said he would ‘encourage his drivers to drive faster’. ‘Too overtake the train in front?’ was the next helpful query from a mischievous MP.

The Patients’ Assocation has made no contribution of any significance to the running of the NHS for the past five years. Their only raison d’etre is to whine about the NHS with obvious complaints. This is an example.

There are no simple solutions to the scourge of MRSA. The work is painstaking and it takes years to show an improvement. There has been great progress. In the past 12 months the total number of cases dropped by a third.

A word of thanks and congratulations to the thousands of NHS staff who have achieved these great decreases would have been appropriate.  The last thing they deserve is an attention seeking celebrity ventilating his prejudiced ignorance.

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Total of British dead in Afghanistan  136

Sleaze please

While it s all legal, the practise is near-sleaze and largely Tory.

A high minded bid by David Cameron to ban his frontbench team from double jobbing appears to have been ditched. There is even a claim that William Hague threatened to resign if he was forced to lose his additional earnings of between £150,000 and £200,000.

Cameron calculated that Hague is worth more on his frontbench than the advantage of his party would gain by parking on the high moral ground. A Select Committee report is soon likely to take a strong line on MPs and Peers hoovering up additional cash from outside jobs.

Not unreasonably, voters believe that in exchange for a full-time wage of £60,000 a year  MPs should work full-time. Cameron will pay a high political price for choosing the  low moral ground.

The LibDems take a strong line on second incomes. Not surprisingly. The amounts they attract are pitifully small. Lembit Opik sold his soul for the loan of a Segway. He was filmed recently on the machine dressed as Santa Claus. Someone must sharpen his sense of the ridiculous.

He recently became the political columnist for the Daily Sport. This is equivalent to my Tory Opponent in 2001 who gave his occupation as the 'Financial correspondent of the Big Issue'.

But is gets worse. The going rate for a weekly column is around what Anne Widdecombe gets from the Daily Express. That's £55,000 a year. She confirms a fee of  around £5,000 for a single article. That the amount that Lembit commands for a WHOLE year of articles.

At those fees, the LibDems can afford to be high minded. Even better to work as volunteers.

Christmas treat

If the relatives bore you rigid over the coming holiday, the Parliamentary Channel  (now BBC Parliament) offers an antidote.

They have strung together some of the best parliamentary debates of the year and they broadcast continuously in th loop lasting about 18 hours. If they follow the pattern of last year, they repeat the loop continuously until the New Year.

One of the items is a glorious session of Public Administration's committee described as the 'Good Government' Committee. Four extinct or slumbering volcanoes give their all. Stripped of cabinet responsibility , Ken Clarke, David Blunkett, Peter Lilley and Nick Raynsford tell the whole truth about cabinet life.

I promise you it's great fun and and a festive educational treat. It will be on a score of times over the holiday. If you cannot wait until a more convenient time, it will broadcast at 5.00 am tomorrow morning.

Set the alarm.

Lehrer resurrection

Searching for words to a carol, I was surprised to find the wealth of performances that are now available on YouTube at the touch of a button. Finding the words for ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Placer D’Armour’ was instant. A few seconds more of searching produced videos of Jussi Bjorling and Joan Baez singing in live performances.

Here was a chance to recapture favourites of mine from the distant past.  Artists now in their eighties are enjoying new dawns as their performances at the peak of their talents are available on YouTube. One pleasant re-discovery is Tom Lehrer. No one under forty appears to have heard of him. I played some of his songs to two 30 year-olds today. They were delighted by the chutzpah and cynicism. A new generation is surprised that people wrote this way in the 50s and 60s,

Tom Lehrer started his concerts by mildly insulting the audience.     ‘ I’d like to take you now, on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget for a while your drab, wretched lives."

They were then startled and delighted by songs of a daring that have not been challenged since then.

The Masochism tango

I ache for the touch of your lips, Dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, Dear.
You can raise welts
Like nobody else,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.

Let our love be a flame, not an ember,
Say it's me that you want to dismember.
Blacken my eye,
Set fire to my tie,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.

We’ll all go together when we go.

When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner or later
Those you love will do the same for you
And you may have thought it tragic
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do
But don't you worry

No more ashes, no more sackcloth
And an armband made of black cloth
Will someday never more adorn a sleeve
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve

And we will all go together when we go
What a comforting thought that is to know.
Universal bereavement, an inspiring achievement
Yes, we will all go together when we go

Christmas cheer

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say "when."
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four. 

There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did say that the awarding of the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete, but has denied that he stopped doing satire as a form of protest, and asserts that he had actually stopped several years earlier

He was not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. “I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them”

The latest news of the now octogenarian is comforting. In a phone call to Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post in February 2008, Lehrer instructed Weingarten to "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama.

Now what has happened to Mort Sahl?

Season of ill will

Season of ill will

Just when it seemed Greengate has blown itself out with feigned indignation and counter accusations, the Mail on Sunday has whistled up a new hurricane of venom.

The investigating police chief Bob Quick said the Tories were trying to undermine his inquiry following a newspaper story that he said endangered his family. Mr Quick says he was forced to move his family after details of their home were published. The Conservatives denied having anything to do with the story.

In a remarkable response to the Mail on Sunday story, Assistant Commissioner Quick said: "The Tory machinery and their press friends are mobilised against this investigation. I think it is a very spiteful act, possibly to intimidate me away from investigating Mr Green, and I feel it has put my family at risk."

Mr Quick went even further in his original angry comment and accused the Tories of  corruption. He subsequently withdrew that word but not his main accusation.

The charge that the Tory Party is using a newspaper to intimidate a police officer who is investigating possible wrongdoing by one of their MPs is a very grave one.  It’s not credible that they would be that stupid. Is it? The motives of the Mail on Sunday are reliably malign. I am sure they will explain that they are doing their duty by leaning on the family of a senior police officer.

Furthermore they will say that the fact that he is currently investigating an MP of the party they love is entirely coincidental.

Of course.

Media balance

No paper other than the Independent have howled their anger at the bargain sell-off of our so-called Independent Nuclear so-called deterrent. Surely a matter of giant importance?

But today they have all been group-obsessing over a fatuous non-story. Even the most perverse anti-Labour bigot would need  a brain transplant to believe that Labour was about to charge 27% interest on Social Fund loans.

 It’s on par with Freddie Starr ate my hamster while camping on the moon with Elvis Presley. It’s the stuff of the Daily Sport. So possibly their new correspondent Lembit might believe it.

Not a soul could be found to verify the story. Every Labour person contacted by the media ridiculed the idea. Yes the party intends to expand the good value loans from Credit Unions. That is very sensible. But the party has nurtured the no-interest loans of the Social Fund as an inefficient and fair anti-dote against the loan sharks.

Even a story without a shred of plausibility is swallowed hook, lie and hyperbole by the moronic media. It even persuaded Tory spokesmen to get up early on the Sabbath to mouth their inanities in TV studios.

This is a hot tip for the award of the non-story of the year.

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Total of British dead in Afghanistan  135

From nuclear cradle to grave

They said it was 'conspiracy theory. Today's news proves that it's a clumsy conspiracy that hands over responsibility for our nuclear industry to American control.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-nuclear-selloff-storm-1204979.html

Today' the  Independent newspaper reports  "Secret nuclear sell-off storm" .It reveals the  final sale of another part of the UK military nuclear infrastructure to the United States.

In this weeks Commons House magazine I tell the story of the cover-up that gagged MPs on the privatisation of Sellafield with a multi £billion taxpayer subsidy. Today's news of the  sale of Aldermaston has been described by nuclear expert David Lowry as " the final piece in an

atomic jigsaw, that gives private American companies total control over 

the Trident WMD system: from design cradle to dismantlement grave.

The cover-up of the Sellafield sale led to  a political row that has festered in Westminster through the autumn, culminating in an explosive debate held on 19 November, (Hansard,columns 119 -126 WH,

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm081119/halltext/81119 h0009.htm#08111970000004)  

The Government have repeated th same trick. They have cut MPs out of loop by publishing the news of the new sale on the day when all MPs had left Westminster for the Christmas break.

When we return to Parliament in early January, I will call for an immediate ministerial statement, and subsequent interrogation, on this latest sell out to unaccountable American companies. 

Greed crunch

Archbishop Rowan Williams makes a startling point.

The unregulated financial world makes no sense. It's fool's gold to believe that we can enrich the planet  with stocks and property inflation without increases the goods we produce.

While there is an understanding of the magic and excitements of transactions that appear to create wealth, they are illusionst. They shift wealth from the poor to the already rich. We have a society where the majority are as rich as a Tudor monarch. Simultaneously, it's a society haunted by guilt, distress and depression.

The dreadful year ahead will give us all a reality check. It is possible that the Archbishop's words will be heeded. It could mean more volunteering to provide an attentive ear and a helping hand to the victims of the slump. We are overdue for a surge in reliance on the people's banks of Credit Unions.

Without understating the severity of the problems ahead, it's right to plan a boost in the mutuality of  society. We could see a resurgence of the volunteer culture. From the wreckage of the our greed-driven economy, we can re-build a sustainable renewable one.

A spending society is devoted to selfishness. A mutual society can serve the common interests of communities.

The Archbishop's powerful analysis offers a gleam of hope.

Rip-off ?

I spoke to the Managing Director of the Solar Panel company who sold a bad bargain to a pensioner constituent of mine.

The company will return the sick pensioner's deposit without penalty. Quite right but questions remain.  Why was credit given to someone who cannot afford to pay the instalments?

How can a firm in all conscience sell as a good value product that saves £360 a year at a cost of £1,800 a year? 

The Managing  Director did not dispute these figures or the calculation that my 74 year old constituent would not benefit financially from the deal until he is 124. He justified the sale on the basis of benefit to the environment. 

Solar panels at this price may make buyers feel virtuous at the price of being poor. It would make sense if we had the German scheme of feed-in tariffs. Government's subsidies rigged the market in favour of renewables and buy surplus electricity at four times market value.

Until we adopt a similar system here, solar panels are for the dedicated rich not for the well-intentioned poor