Fighting bribery with bribery

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 253

A thinly attended House of Commons heard a statement on Afghanistan and the Yemen. The civilised peaceful heaven of the Commons is a world away from the bloodstain hell of chaos of Helmand where two more of our solders were killed today.  

The plan is to spend £5 billion of our money mostly to bribe Taliban warriors to desert. The American bribe on an industrial scale. Bubble-wrapped tonnes of $100 bills are delivered on pallets and distributed to buy favours. Without any sense of irony spokesperson of all three major talked about the need to eliminate corruption. My question was again near-twitter length.

'Is it sensible to fight bribery with bribery, corruption with corruption when history proves that paying Dane-geld means you never get rid of the Danes?'

David Milliband said that he did not agree that what was promised was 'bribery'? Not nasty foreign Afghan bribery of course, just our homogenised, pure British new bribery. 

So that's all right then.

 

 

Towering humiliation

I said no to the invitation to live in a tower block.

It was tempting until I heard the conditions. It's good idea that MPs should find out more about life on drugs-infested tower blocks. Lib Dem MP had already had the experience. He told me that he wept three times.

I think I am made of tougher stuff and my childhood was lived in poor conditions. But the people organising the programme said they could not guarantee that I would have a bed. That's too much discomfort to make a point. The more I heard about the project the more my interest faded. It was not so much educate the MPs, but humiliate the MPs.

The first programme was puzzling. Iain Duncan Smith disappeared after a short spell. Mark Oaten did weep. Austin Mitchell and his wife went off to have a posh dinner in a friend's house. This is not how it was supposed to be. I'm hooked. Triumph or humiliation for MPs next week? Exciting.

The Unusual Suspect

My new book is being printed tomorrow. The dust jacket is still being prepared.

It is 100,000 words long. They have been edited, copy-edited and indexed. My previous books have been written then e-mailed to the publishers. It was impressive when I had a call on Sunday pointing out that I had a sister-in-law's name Lillian with two 'l's  once and one 'l' once. Another queried the meaning of the 'pale pink economy' in which I sought work in 1985. It was our name for the Community Programme non-jobs. It now means something entirely different.

The book has had many titles. Some of the rejected ones have been used as titles to the four parts of the book, Baptism of treachery, Shame is the spur, Unbending knee, and Staggering to idealism. The final agreed title is 'The Unusual Suspect'.

Publication date in February 25th.

Silver

Thanks for all who sent good wishes to my wife and me on our Silver Wedding yesterday.

We married in 1985. There was a collection for the striking miners at our wedding party. It was a beautiful day. I was on the dole at the time with a total income of £27 a week. That was to support a mortgage, three adults, two children and three dogs. It was not the most promising start to a marriage.

We are not having a party. Instead it will be a few meals with family and friends. Yesterday it was a very pleasing pub meal with our immediate family. We have been very lucky.

Comments

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Bribe the taliban to ask them to stop winning. Unlikely to succeed at this stage because it sounds like an attempt to stem the tide of insurgent dominance. It would also be very difficult to implement such a scheme.

Presumably the money will pass through Afghan government channels. They are notoriously corrupt and are not really a government capable of carrying out such a scheme logistically. All the reports indicate that the government's reach is next to non-existent whereas the Taliban is the shadow government throughout Afghanistan.

'Without any sense of irony spokesperson of all three major talked about the need to eliminate corruption.'

How does the second most corrupt country become a safe bet to hand £5 billion to in an attempt to fix these problems?

This is just more of the same rubbish, the impression I get is one of a confused clutching at straws.

[Tony]

Congratulations on your silver wedding and the book.

As for the bribery isn't this just like BAE Systems - bribery is 'bad' , unless it gets you what you want ?

I think we should just leave 'em to it ..they seem to have a clear view on what they want - its just not what we want ..

[JB]

Bonecrushing handshakes

Keep up the good work on the above - those of us with arthritis in the
fingers are frequent victims of oafs, almost exclusively males, trying to
make an impression (sic). The nature of my employment involves a lot of hand
shaking and consequently I am often having to explain to guilty persons the
discomfort / pain that their enthusiastic hand gripping is causing. It is
rare that I receive an apology or sympathetic understanding of this often
unintentional assault.