Piffle Mail

What a sorry piece of empty piffle.

The main media today have lapped up a Mail on Sunday non-story and spewed out the dregs. Feeding the secrecy neurosis, the Mail are shocked to the soles of their Gucci boots with the horror that family pictures of our MI5 boss are on Facebook.

Panting up in the rear to get some cheap weekend publicity is LibDems Ed Davey. When challenged by a BBC News interviewer of the worth of this thin tale, he answered, ‘It’s on the Front page of the Mail on Sunday.’

‘Is that the criteria for importance?’ he was asked. Also on the front page is a sob story about the poverty of a singer who is unknown to me. It’s this weekend for Mail news. Why do others regurgitate the fantasy fears? The Facebook revelations show our Boss Spook in his Speedos and his wife and daughter balancing on chairs.

Will all this lead to terrorists’ attacks or a dirty bomb? Should you fear a violent dawn? Get a life Ed Davey. You’d have been better off spending Sunday having a snooze in the garden or attending a seminar on Common Sense for Beginners.

Wimpish - up North?

Two North East Labour MPs have announced they are standing down at the next general election.

Former Europe and Defence minister Doug Henderson, 60, said it was time for a "younger person with more energy" to fight the Newcastle North seat.Ex-chief whip Hilary Armstrong, 65, also said she was standing down from her North-West Durham seat to make way for a younger generation.

Both MPs were first elected to the House of Commons in 1987. As I was. Douggie said: " I think it is now time for a younger person with more energy and vitality to take on the tough tasks ahead."

Mrs Armstrong  said: "I will be 65 at the end of 2010, and feel that it is now the right time to let someone else take up the role."

60?... 65? ..No vitality?  No energy?  No more ideas or anger?  Everything OK then? Poor old souls. We mature MPs in Wales are approaching our prime of life at 65.

As a person in mid-career, I promise  you will hear none of this flaccid defeated bleating here. Onwards and Upwards!

Charge of Helmand Light Brigade

Anyone have any ideas of what I should say in my Westminster Hall debate? I have an hour and half of parliamentary time to fill. I will time my speech to a length suitable to allow speakers to contribute-depending on who turn up. Some interesting quotes that I might use in Wednesday debate on the ‘The Deployment of British Troops in Helmand’ includes: -

John Reid Defence Secretary 24 April 2006

“We are in the south to help and protect the Afghan people construct their own democracy. We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction.”

Lt Col Henry Worsely January 2006 described the security situation in Helmand as “pretty poor” with “no military power” there. BRITISH TROOPS being sent to Helmand province will “stir up a hornets’ nest” and provide “plenty more targets” for insurgents,

Gilles Dorronsoro of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in January: "The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban."

 Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who led 16 Air Assault to Helmand, said in a report back to London before the real trouble began: "There is not to my mind an insurgency in Helmand. But we can create one if we want to."

Major S N Miller of the Defence Intelligence Staff said our drugs policy was "a disaster". The British presence has not won hearts and minds."

"British policymakers sleepwalked the armed forces into Helmand without any meaningful reconstruction plan and the desire to fight a major insurgency."

Now only one in 10 Afghans support our troops, said Major Miller. "The Army has become defeatist with commanders openly talking about an unwinnable war," he added. Just £20million of the £450million British aid for Afghanistan is going to Helmand where it is desperately needed, said Major Miller.

Eight years after the Taleban were toppled from power, with hundreds of millions of pounds spent and more than 150 British lives lost in trying to defeat them, they still have a pervasive influence in the heartlands of Helmand province in Afghanistan.

According to the commander of British forces in the province, about 40 per cent of the most densely populated central region of the Afghan province remains under their sway.

Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of the 8,300-strong 19 Light Brigade, told The Times that although the Taleban do not necessarily control the ground in these areas of Helmand they have a presence sufficient to intimidate the local people.

Total of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 174

Total of British soldiers killed in Iraq = 179

Comments

[KJ]

I am a Labour supporter and will continue to be so (despite the post 1997 disappointments with New Labour – Iraq , PFI and education policy (faith schools), to name but a few).

I have recently discovered your blog and it is a joy to read, informed, instructive and illuminating.

It appears that your opinions are radical (drug reform) and progressive. Perhaps in modern politics, where differences between parties often appears nuanced rather than real, these views can only be expressed from the back-benches.

I yearn for a time when Labour rediscovers a left of centre philosophy that merges social justice (less inequality) to capitalism – am I hoping for too much (rhetorical) ?

Keep up the good blogging.

[rwendland]

Yes, the MI6 boss story is pathetic. If the family details of the MI6 boss have to be secret, then it would only be possible for security service insiders to become the boss. And after the stories of MI6 questions to rendition detainees, I think now is a good time for an outsider to become boss.

The next boss is currently a very public diplomat to the UN, so it is inevitable that a lot about his background will be public. Do we want only insiders to become the boss?

Call me suspicious, but I would not be surprised if this story was given legs by security service insiders who did not like the selection outcome, and want to support the case for insider promotions.

[Kay Tie]

KJ, you can't have your definition of equality with capitalism. Capitalism is at heart freedom of choice, and people don't choose to be levelled down. The harder you tighten the grip on people the more they slip through your fingers.

Oh, and stop using "progressive" to describe socialism. It's not progressive except in the sense "the state takes progressively more and more of your wealth and freedom".

[HuwOS]

KayTie, KJ referred to Paul's opinions as being progressive, "radical and progressive" even.

Not that KJ or anyone else couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't rightly refer to "progressive socialism";
but the fact is they didn't use the term.

BTW capitalism can only be even presented as being about freedom of choice, if capitalism has been firmly bound down with legislation and been contained. When left to its own devices, it is a system which grants very little choice to the vast majority of people and it grants them no rights at all when left unfettered.
Education, decent pay, working age restrictions, decent working conditions, medical care, none of these need to be even gestured towards by capitalism.
We have moved away from unfettered capitalism for so long that perhaps you simply forgot that there were damn good reasons why we did so.

[Kay Tie]

Huw, let's be careful with definitions. I don't like the word "capitalism" because it's poorly defined: Labour's corporatism is a form of capitalism, one as repugnant to me as you, I suspect. I'd rather talk about free markets, where people are free to decide what to accept. It removes all argument about what "decent" pay is like: decent pay is what people freely choose to give up their time in exchange for.

[Adam]

This report by the ICOS looks at some of the factors which are driving the insurgency.

http://icosgroup.net/modules/reports/Countering_The_Insurgency_In_Afghanistan/press_release

It finds that the misguided policies of the international community have been the cause of what it describes as a grassroots resistance to NATO.

According to this report there are basically two kinds of insurgent, a core jihadist element, and a grassroots insurgency which is being driven by extreme poverty.

Furthermore, the report looks at some of the legitimate grievances that need to be addressed if any progress is to be made. Unfortunately the situation has been going downhill since this report was published in 2007 because the grievances have not been fixed.

A recent poll conducted by the BBC looked at public opinion throughout Afghanistan as a whole.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/02_february/09/afghanistan.shtml

It found that only 4% wanted the Taliban back and that 90% are opposed.

However, another ICOS report (focusing on how to defeat the Taliban) found that more than a quarter of people supported the Taliban. In any case there is a sizeable minority driven by economic necessity or through legitimate grievances to fight NATO.

http://icosgroup.net/modules/reports/struggle_for_kabul/taliban_tactics

Going back to the BBC poll, although it says that only 4% support the Taliban throughout Afghanistan, 25% said that attacks on NATO forces can be justified whereas 64% say they cannot, this has deteriorated from 2007 when the figures were 17% and 74%.

Are there other anti-government/ NATO forces who they support then? For example the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his militia have been blamed for a number of attacks in and around Kabul recently. Hekmatyar founded a political party, ‘an offshoot of which remains a popular party in the Afghan parliament.’ Half of the party has remained in government, whilst the rest led by Hekmatyar have joined the insurgency.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/07/11/afghan-warlords-formerly-backed-by-the-cia-now-turn-their-guns-on-us-troops.html?PageNr=2

[Kay Tie]

Adam, the only phrase one can reach for is "what a bloody mess."

I sometimes wonder if we'd have been better off with Sid James running things in the style of Carry On Up The Khyber..