The Irish get all the luck. They get a Government, and a Finance Minister, who actually admit that they're in a deep recession, and that drastic action must be taken.

And what do we get? We get Alistair 'Eyebrows' Darling standing there pretending that nothing's wrong after all. "A position of strength". For fuck's sake.

The Irish get a budget, yesterday, openly described as "medicine" for the terrible state they're in.

We get a budget designed solely to make Labour look good, and the Tories look bad. To create political dividing lines, rather than balance the bloody books.

The Irish have cut back on welfare payments - less for 'jobseekers' and less on benefits overall. Share the pain.

We won't. We'll continue to pour vast amounts of cash all over "the welfare", Labour's core vote.We've even increased a couple of welfare payments, as a little pre-election bribe.

And to fund that, we get a second increase in National Insurance, and a sneaky fiddle with tax bands, so that those that do work pay yet more tax on their income. 52% and rising, folks.

The Irish get public sector paycuts across the board. Even the Taoiseach gets a 20% pay cut.

We get Gordon Brown and his fucking useless cronies still taking the same (totally undeserved) salaries and expenses, and the masses get cheaper bingo, so that we might not notice.

The Irish get an emergency budget that reflects the gravity of the situation, and makes deep, painful cuts to remedy it.

We get a Mickey Mouse, class envy, grandstanding, will-never-be-collected, "spank the banks" bonus tax.

Those lucky, lucky Irish.

_

They just don't learn, do they, those fuckwits in the Labour Party?

It's taken months for them to slowly, painfully crawl out from under the shadow of McBrideGate, when several Labour figures were shown to be a bunch of lying, sleazy gits. When the country was appalled to learn that vicious rumours had been invented, to be spread purely to undermine and damage NuLabs 'enemies' in the great class war.

The public only have short memories, bless, and with the barbecue summer here at last, and Big Brother 10 (probably) getting quite tense, all that sleaze, spin and dishonesty was fading into the past.

But clearly, fading into the past for Labour as well. For, lo and behold, the gits are revealed - by The Sun, the self-proclaimed "Paper for Our Boys", among others - to have kept right on marching with the old smear campaigns.

This time, the target is General Sir Richard Dannatt. General Dannatt, winner of the Military Cross, is due to retire from the Army in a few days, after 38 years of distinguished service.

38 years? Pretty impressive, eh? Pat on the back, small ceremony, perhaps a clock, then off he goes?

No. Not for Gen Sir D.

Unfortunately for him, he has had the temerity in the past to criticise the Glorious Party of Labour, repeatedly embarrassing the Government by speaking out on trivial, irrelevant issues.

You know, tiny little unimportant things like "why are the soldiers in Afghanistan paid less than traffic wardens?", "why do our soldiers live and fight under such shit conditions?"; "why haven't we got enough fucking boots to go around?".

Recently, the pushy bastard underlined his calls for more resources for troops, claiming that "better surveillance equipment is vital to targeting the Taliban laying roadside bombs". What the fuck does he know about it, eh? The cheek! Just because he's 'Head of the Army'. What does he think we have a Ministry of Defence for? A proper one, sitting in London, busy with the paperwork, not messing about overseas with all those rag heads.

The General's questions have not gone down well with the Government. Poor Gordon's trying to have a holiday here. So, inevitably, a campaign has begun within the offices of government, deep in the slimy, fetid nests where the hissing, squirming spin doctors live.

As with any 'enemy of the party', Sir Richard must be destroyed, humiliated. And, as with every Labour campaign, this must be done by smear, innuendo, lies and distortion.

Accordingly, a series of Freedom of Information requests have been made, asking for details of the cost of the General's 'business entertaining' at his apartment, the former home of the Princess of Wales.

It's not known exactly who tabled these requests, but given that the General has been a thorn in the governments' side for some time, and given that one unnamed defence minister recently described Sir Richard as a “complete bastard”, you wouldn't be astonished if it turned out to be a Labour researcher, would you? Who else gives a flying fuck about how much the General spent on Filet Mignon?

The only possible use for this information is so that some slimy, sleazy shitbag paid-for-by-us researcher can bash out a nasty little piece to feed all the Labour-luvin' rags. Something along the lines of "General gorges on swans, washed down with vintage Krug, while Our Brave Boys forced to eat cardboard". Create a split between the boys on the front line and the top brass, then jump right in.

Perhaps Kerry fucking McTwitter can start up another fatuous fucking online campaign, desperately trying to associate Labour and the Army. Hey kids, not only do #welovethenhs but guess what? #welovethearmy too! Cool!

CF doesn't normally have a lot of time for Dr Liam Fox, Tory Shadow for Defence, but his words sum up this little episode rather well:

“At a time when our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, ministers spend their time in puerile personality politics. General Dannatt is a man of honour and integrity who leads from the front.

His Labour detractors are squalid and cowardly, undermining from the shadows.”

Yeah. That's about right.



UPDATE: Guido thinks the rat with the FoI requests is Kevan (yes 'an', not 'in') Jones, a career Labour hanger-on, and one of Brown's long term lickspittles. No suprises there, then.



.

According to his biog' on LabourList, contributor Mike Smith is a Labour Party activist in Lambeth; he also works for SERA - Labour's environment campaign.

It would appear he also eats a lot of strong cheese just before bed, and has some strange and vivid nightmares.

After one of these episodes, Mike was clearly moved to sign on to LabourLost and set out what he thought his party (and, regrettably, our Government) should now do, and right soon at that. He's a smart boy, Mike. In spite of his loyalty to the new nasty party, he admits:

"there is now the possibility that Labour could lose the next general election"

Really? Get away. This, to Mike, would be a problem; not least because if the Labour party continues blazing away at both feet with a machine gun, then it could happen..

"..without a real discussion about what a Tory government's policies (or lack thereof) will mean for Britain"

..for which read, "without any of Gordon's blatant lies and shit-slinging shifting the public's view".

So, what does Mike propose the Government does?

"The Government needs to .. start to entrench our values and policies in law to stop a potential Tory government undoing Labour’s achievements of the last decade. "

Whoah! Hang on. What? What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Is this serious?

"During the next year or so in power, the Government should pursue a twin approach of setting out our vision for a fourth Labour term if elected, but also entrenching the gains made so far under a Labour government. The proposals announced by Yvette Cooper to introduce a legal duty to tackle child poverty could provide a model to embed the gains made over the last 12 years."

"..in the year before the most dangerous general election for Labour in recent decades, we must .. focus on how we secure and entrench the gains made so far, to ensure the Tories can’t undo these without a fight."

Dear God. Bring smelling salts. Bring strong drinks. Let’s just get this straight, shall we? This 'Labour activist' genuinely believes that all Labour policies and their fucking bizarre 'values' should be made into law. Into fucking law, for Christ's sake.

How fucking typical of Labour-think is that? If you don't think the way Labour thinks, then you're not just wrong, you're breaking the fucking law.

Do you think that we should stop giving overseas aid to countries that have their own fucking Space Programme? You just committed a thought-crime.

Think there's too many unelected ministers in the Cabinet? Best not to say it out loud.

Not happy that the Iraq inquiry is to be held in secret? I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to the station, Sir.

'I'm arresting you, Sir, for thinking that making Sir Alan Sugar a Lord was a fucking stupid thing to do'

All-too-frequently, this totalitarian government's actions draw comparisons to Orwell's 1984, but this takes the fucking biscuit. This would have George Orwell himself raising his eyebrows and telling you not to be so fucking stupid.

Our only hope, dear God, is that Mike Smith is a very junior, very misguided, lone activist and came up with this fatuous idea all alone. The alternative is terrifying.

CF really, really, really hopes that this isn't the first sighting of the preliminary phases of the early stages of my Lord Mandelson's master plan. If it is, then we're screwed.

It's possible that this has been seriously considered, and is now being carefully trailed to see whether the public will swallow it or not. Or whether the public will even fucking notice, given that SuBo's dropped out of BGT, Kerry Katona has got fat (again) and Megan Fox is single.

If we hear this again on the sofas of breakfast TV, or in a little ghost-written piece from Gordon,tucked away in the Sunday Mirror, then it's definitely time to take to the fucking streets.



Hat-tip to Old Holborn for picking up this nonsense


.

CF was wr... wr... wrong (hurts to say it) with this, yesterday - the Daily Telegraph wasn't switching targets (probably waiting for Sunday) and more troughing Labour MP's got exposed.

Most egregious of last night's Hall of Shame was Barbara Follett, The wife of author Ken Follett and "one of Parliament's richest MPs" (quoth the BBC).

Poor Babsy felt a bit nervous "after being mugged" -- that's fucking rich, after you've been mugging the taxpayer for years -- and demanded a security patrol. Paid for by us. The total bill for security patrols between 2004 and 2008 was £25,411.64. This is a woman whose husband admits to bunging her 100 grand a year "top up":

The Huntsman wrote about her a while back asking about all the lovely extra dosh from hubby:

"Mr. Follett .. chuckling .. like a pelican gorging itself on a school of fish [said] “I should be so lucky. Barbara in ten years as MP has never brought a penny home. She spends all of her allowances and all of her salary running her office and I actually subsidise it to the tune of every year at least a hundred thousand pounds a year”

In other words, Mr. Follett gives at least £100,000 per year, every year to his wife which effectively doubles the expenses she gets from the Taxpayer to run her office as an MP. By way of comparison, Mrs. Follett claimed some £109,000 as office expenses (out of a total expense claim for 2006/2007 of £133,300) as her Parliamentary Expenses.

Mrs. Follett has been an MP since winning Stevenage in May 1997, ten and a half years ago, so we are talking about something like £1,050,000 over time if he has been doing this throughout her time as Stevenage’s MP.

Huntsman's angle back then was concern about her total non-declaration of this money, but now we're in a different world. Why couldn't he pay for his wife's security blanket too? "Don't worry dear, I'll claim it on expenses".

The Sunday Times was writing about abuses of the expenses system in 2007 (2007? For fuck's sake) and said that she had

"claimed more than £120,000 in MPs’ allowances to pay for a London home, while owning a buy-to-let flat in the capital. Follett last year claimed £22,107 in expenses for a central London flat bought by her husband seven years ago. But it was confirmed last week that she owns another flat near the houses of parliament that she could have used instead. The MP also has the use of the family home in Hertfordshire, less than a 30-minute rail commute from London. The use of public funds to effectively subsidise an extra London home for the Folletts - who are together worth more than £15m - has prompted new calls for a review of the controversial housing allowance."

In 2007. A review, called for in 2007. Well, a fat lot of good that did. Long grass? Yup, long grass.

Dizzy thinks she's in trouble:

"I'm thinking that 3,139 majority in Stevenage is looking dicey this morning"

So, Stevenage, what are you waiting for? Your footie team were knocked out of the Blue Square play-offs (a goal in injury-time of extra-time - bad luck) so there's only one reason left to take to the streets.

Get out there. If you're a Labour supporter (still? really?) demand her deselection. If you're not, demand she resigns. Either way, call a by-election.

Bye-bye Babsy.

Somebody in the bowels of the Labour spin machine ("adverts to irritate you, paid for by you") has noticed that a huge number of people have signed the "Oh, do fuck off Gordon" petition. Over 52,000 in fact. That's quite a groundswell of popular opinion, eh? Pretty hard for the target to ignore. (but clearly not impossible, because he bloody well is ignoring it)

So, the spinner thought, imagine if we could have a similar petition to damage that nasty Dave.

And here it is.

The page, for those that really can't be arsed to visit it (good, keep the hits down) claims

"David Cameron has refused to commit to maintaining child benefit and winter fuel allowances at the same level as the Labour Government"

The evil bastard. So that's his secret plan. How could he? Something must be done. The site bleats on

He talks of an “age of austerity” but he must answer the question “austerity for who?” Sign our petition now to help request an answer…

And that's it. Sign our petition to make the Leader of the Opposition answer a rhetorical question. What the fuck?

Pathetic. No really. Pathetic.



UPDATE: as a commenter points out "Austerity for who?" is not even a grammatically correct sentence. For fuck's sake.

All day - ALL SODDING DAY - the BBC News page has been running as its headline

"TAX RISE NOT THE END OF NEW LABOUR"

If we all bow our heads and pretend to agree with this nonsense, do you think Mandy will let them take it down?