Quote of the Day

Anthony Blair announces that he wants to spend most of his remaining years ‘ensuring that religion is seen as a force for good’.

It’s a noble aim, Mr Blair, and, if you really mean it, here’s my suggestion as to how you can achieve it most easily and effectively.

Convert to atheism, today if possible.

Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday

"One of Hartlepool's most extravagant showers"

Some of the details of the expenses claims put in by fourteen leading politicians have now been published in the newspapers. These, it will be recalled, are the ones that the Speaker of the House of Commons went to court to try to keep secret, and they do make very interesting reading. Although perhaps they would have been even more fascinating, had they been complete: as I noted previously, House of Commons staff conveniently contrived to destroy some of Tony Blair's expenses claims, prior to their release. Anyway, here are some highlights:

While Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett put in a bill for £638.03 to renew the lighting in her sun lounge. The papers also show that Mrs Beckett had a claim for garden expenses partially rejected, with £600 for plants and pergola disallowed.

[...]

As Mr Blair was preparing to send British troops to Iraq, he also had more mundane domestic concerns on his mind. In March 2003, a new kitchen was fitted in his constituency home in Trimdon Colliery, Co Durham, at a cost to the taxpayer of £6,500.

Two months later, another bill arrived to cover the £4,174 cost of other work to the kitchen, including fitting cupboards and tiles and redecorating the room. It brought the total expense of the Blairs' new kitchen to £10,674.

During 2005, the then Prime Minister claimed for utility bills, as well as £515.75 for a dishwasher and £50 on servicing an Aga stove in 2002.

By contrast, Gordon Brown spent just £4,471 refurbishing his own kitchen in Fife, including its Seville cream wall tiles, in 2005. Mr Brown's claims include bills for £1,396 for redecoration as well as the £33-a-month cost of his Sky TV connection.

[...]

Peter Mandelson, formerly Mr Blair's closest confidant, must have fitted one of Hartlepool's most extravagant showers. The bill for fitting a shower and decorating the bathroom in his constituency home in July 2003 – a year before he resigned to become a European Commissioner – was £2,981.

[...]

John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, claimed £6,707.06 to cover external repairs to his constituency home in Hull in 2005, including replacing windows and sills and supplying and fixing mock Tudor boards to the front gable.

[...]

Stevenage MP Barbara Follett, the wife of millionaire novelist Ken Follett, claimed more than £1,600 for window cleaning at her London home, with the cleaners visiting on 18 occasions at £94 a time during 2003-04.

To consider our beloved ex-leader for a moment: at the time he spent £10,000 of our money refurbishing his kitchen, Blair had two official homes - 10 Downing Street and Chequers. His constituency house, Myrobella, was thus his third residence, and not one which I imagine he spent much time in. His salary was then well over £150,000 a year, and his wife was earning considerably more. A little over a year after claiming £10,000 for Myrobella's kitchen, the Blairs spent roughly £3.5 million on a town house in Bayswater - their current primary residence. They are also, infamously, the owners of two flats in the nicest part of Bristol.

All of which adds up to the question: why on Earth should the public be expected to cough up the money to buy these multi-millionaires a new kitchen in a house they rarely inhabit? Well, I suppose there is no greater reason to object to this than to the public funding Gordon Brown's Sky connection, or Peter Mandelson's new shower (although it doesn't matter how often you wash, Mandy - the taint of corruption isn't coming off!), or John Prescott's "mock Tudor boards".
The fact is, that these luxuries should be paid for by the people who want them, and who benefit from them. If MPs want Sky connections and new showers, then should they do what everyone else does, and purchase them themselves, out of their own salaries.

What these details also reveal (if it is indeed a revelation), is that MPs are a set of grasping chancers, who look to claim whatever they can get away with, rather than what is fair or reasonable. How else can you explain the audacity of Margaret Beckett's demand that the taxpayer should shell out for her Dahlias? Or, indeed, any of the claims highlighted above?

Fortuitous circumstance of the day

Some of Tony Blair’s expenses claims, which the High Court last week ruled should be disclosed to the public, have been shredded. The documents, itemising Blair’s claims for household expenses during a year of his premiership, were destroyed in the midst of a legal battle over whether they should be published. All MPs’ expenses are funded by taxpayers.

It is a criminal offence to destroy documents to prevent their disclosure under freedom of information (FOI) laws, but Westminster officials say they were unaware that the files were the subject of a legal challenge. They insist they were destroyed by mistake.

They didn't realise that the files were the subject of a legal challenge? Do civil servants not read newspapers?

...some of Blair’s files covering claims for Myrobella, his constituency home, were destroyed by Commons officials after they rejected The Sunday Times’s FOI request in January 2005 to see his claims for £43,029 of public money covering a three-year period.

"After...January 2005" isn't particularly clear. It would be nice to know at what precise point in the last forty months the files were shredded. After all, the closer in time the shredding was to the order that the files be released to the public, the greater the likelihood that this was not just a mindless blunder.

Norman Baker, who has campaigned for more transparency in his fellow MPs’ expenses, said: “How convenient that some of Tony Blair’s expenses have been shredded. This is either incompetence or obstruction of the Freedom of Information Act and should be properly investigated.”

"How convenient" indeed!

Cometh the hour...

...cometh the lying, Stalinist, deluded control freak, with the big clunking fist.

Actually, in a way I feel almost bereft seeing Blair leave. He has, after all, been in charge for ten years. The election he won in 1997 was the first I really paid any attention to as a politically-interested young person/precocious brat, and I can barely remember anyone else leading the Labour Party. I suppose the feeling is something analogous to hearing about the death of a much-detested neighbour or relative: someone who has been a major presence in one's life, but whom one absolutely cannot stand.

No, it might feel somewhat odd thinking that Blair is no longer infesting 10 Downing Street, but I for one certainly won't miss him. In my opinion, for his total failures on immigration, the EU, crime, and education, he has some claim to be the worst Prime Minister this country has ever experienced. Certainly, I can think of no other PM in history who has done so much to sell the native population of this country down the river, and to destroy the very fabric of our society and our culture, as Blair has, through mass immigration and multiculturalism. But if any readers can think of a PM worse than Blair, then they are welcome to put their suggestions in the comments box.

Having said that, I really don't expect Brown to be any better, and should Cameron come to power at the next election, I can envisage that he might well set a new record in terms of Prime Ministerial incompetence. The problem we have today is not so much with Blair as an individual, but with a political class that has become so bound up in itself and its own petty obsessions, and so detached from the reality facing this country, that whoever it spews up as its chosen leader will almost inevitably be disastrous. Forgive me, therefore, if, while delighting in the passing from power of the dreadful man himself, I don't get overly excited about the dawn of the post-Blair era.

Postscript: As a mildly interesting point of trivia, it should be noted that, with the ascension of Brown to the position of First Lord of the Treasury, we will have our first PM since Neville Chamberlain (another contender for worst PM ever) who went to university at an institution other than Oxford. Will this signify a sea-change in the way our society is run? No.

Tony Blair hears about Islamic moderation, and favoured methods of wife-beating

I see that the Blessed Tony has begun his crusade (if one can still use that particular word) to bring the world's Christians, Jews, and Muslims together in one great embrace. As well as announcing a £1million increase in funding for Islamic studies in UK universities (jizya, anyone?), Blair is hosting a conference of leading "moderate" Muslims, at Cambridge University. No Motoons will be on display...

As usual, of course, what passes for "moderate" among Muslims is roughly the same as that which passes for "psychotic loon" among anyone else. The list of participants at the conference includes, for example Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt. As well as expressing his support for Hezbollah, Gomaa also has some interestingly moderate views on the proper treatment of women:

...when Allah permitted wife-beating, He permitted it to the other side of culture, which considers it as one of the means to preserve the family, and as one of the means to preserve stability.

Another of Blair's new moderate friends is Hamza Yusuf, aka Hamza Yusuf Hanson. As Stephen Schwartz, himself a convert to Islam, has written:

Before 9/11, Hanson, a convert to Islam, was known for his high-pitched, hysterical rhetoric in denouncing America...two days before 9/11, Hanson hollered in Los Angeles, “This country (America) unfortunately has a great, a great tribulation coming to it. And much of it is already here, yet people are too illiterate to read the writing on the wall.”

In another pearl of Hansonian wisdom, the Islamist extremist side of his multiple personality babbled freely at a 1996 convention of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a paramilitary front for Pakistani jihadists. There Hanson described America as “a country that has little to be proud of in its past and less to be proud of in the present. I am a citizen of this country not by choice but by birth. I reside in this country not by choice but by conviction in attempting to spread the message of Islam in this country. I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights or any other element of this society that is held sacrosanct by the ill-informed peoples that make up this charade of a society… [F]undamentals of Islam are being compromised… [C]onvention resolutions are meaningless Masonic exersises (sic) devised by men who desire to engage people in forums that would insure nothing changes… [T]here should be no voting or debate… [W]e have no room for ayes or nays.”

The rest of the participants seem to be a mix of dhimmis (with David Cameron, that great champion of Muslim family values, featuring prominently), and a few Muslims who may actually warrant the label "moderate" (in the sense that they don't appear to be actively siding with the enemy).

And what will this conference achieve? Absolutely nothing. Gomaa and Hamza Yusuf Hanson will repeat their well-worn taqiya party trick, and play the role of nice, friendly moderates. Other Muslims present, who genuinely don't want to kill or dominate everyone, will talk and talk - all to absolutely no effect, since they can wield nowhere near the same influence as Gomaa or Hanson. Dhimmi academics will pontificate, and the hot air will make the conference hall feel like a sauna. And at the end of it all, the situation will be exactly the same as it was before, except that the Muslims may have managed to wring a few more privileges out of the government.

Tony Blair, take note!

North Korea has demoted its former premier to manager of a chemical plant. Pak Pong Ju was named the chief administrative manager of the Sunchon Vinalon Complex after being sacked as premier last month.

I never thought I'd say this but, let us follow the glorious example set by the Democratic People's Republic!

He'd be more use managing a chemical plant than he would trying to bring about world peace, anyway. More successful too, I'd imagine.

Blair: The Messiah Years

Yet more evidence emerges of Tony Blair's burgeoning Messiah complex. Not content with having taken Britain to new heights of multicultural glory, he is now planning to single-handedly bring Christians, Jews, and - yes, you guessed it - Muslims together, in a spirit of universal harmony, and brotherly love:

Tony Blair intends to create a global foundation to foster “greater understanding” between the three “Abrahamic faiths” of Christianity, Judaism and Islam after he leaves Downing Street, The Times has learnt.

[...]

Mr Blair, who was enthusiastically reading the Koran even before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, said recently: “The tragedy is that as Christians, Jews and Muslims we are all Abrahamic religions. We regard ourselves as children of Abraham but we have fought for so long.”

In a speech in 2006 he referred to a woman protesting about the Pope’s recent visit to Turkey holding a poster which stated that “Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God”. This, he said, was “elevating the placard to an altogether higher plane of theology”.

He added: “Most Christians are hugely surprised to be told that the Koran reveres Jesus as a prophet. Many Jews, Muslims and Christians are entirely ignorant of the rich Abrahamic heritage we share in common.”

That's what Blair has to say about relations between Muslims on the one hand, and Christians and Jews on the other. Now, what do the Koran and the Hadiths have to say?

O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

(Sura 5.51)

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

(Sura 9.29)

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!

(Sura 9.30)

When the last moment of the life of Allah's Apostle came he started putting his 'Khamisa' on his face and when he felt hot and short of breath he took it off his face and said, "May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their Prophets." The Prophet was warning (Muslims) of what those had done.

(Bukhari 1.8.427)

Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

(Bukhari, 4.52.177)

"But," the deceitful Muslims and the idiotic dhimmis will say, "such out of context quotations from thousands of years ago tell us nothing about Islam today." So, for them, here are some recent news stories showing just how keen Muslims are on inter-faith understanding:

NAZARETH – Islamic groups held a large militant march down the main streets of Nazareth this weekend, highlighting for some here the plight of Christians in this ancient city where Muslims have become a majority and members of the dwindling Christian population say they suffer regular intimidation.

[...]

"The march is meant to intimidate Christians," said Saleem, a Nazareth Christian resident who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of what he said was "Muslim retaliation" for speaking out.

"It's part of the methods used by the Muslims in very obvious ways to create an atmosphere where the Christians should know the Muslims are the main power and we are not welcome anymore," Saleem said.

Not very friendly now, is it? Perhaps Tony will be able to talk them out of it. And, anyway, these were only a "tiny minority of extremists" (TM). Thank God (or should that be Allah?) for the vast majority of moderate Muslims. Like Yousef al-Qaradawi, described be Ken Livingstone as a "progressive figure" in Islam:

Top Islamist cleric Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi has delivered a speech on Qatari television calling on Muslims to murder Jews in "in the name of Islam." The speech has been translated by the Arabic translation service MEMRI.

On February 25, Qaradawi told viewers: "Everything will be on our side and against Jews on (Judgment Day); at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: 'Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there's a Jew behind me, come and kill him. They will point to the Jews."

Do you know, I think that the Blessed Tony may just have bitten off more than he can chew. Of course, that hasn't stopped him before. And I'm sure that the nice friendly Muslims in suits will play along nicely, sitting and smiling with whatever rabbis and priests are foolish enough to be involved in this, before going back to their Mosques and commanding the followers to wage war against the very people with whom they maintain a pretence of friendship.