The Laddie Vanishes

Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons public administration committee, is probably the only MP in the country who actually wants to see Damian McBride at the moment. He wants McBride to give evidence to the committee which is currently investigating the role of 'special advisers' in UK politics.

The only problem is he can't find him.

Strange as it may seem, for once the timing of this event isn't significant as McBride hasn't been seen in public since Gordo booted him out of no. 10 and, not surprisingly, no one is admitting to having seen him elsewhere either.

So, has he 'done a bunk' or have Gordo's blackshirts been 'cleaning house' Godfather style?

MPs 'seek to trace' aide McBride

Unsuspecting eh?

For a long time now it's been generally recognised that the alleged deterrent effect of so-called 'safety cameras' is virtually non-existent. Many have suggested that it is and always has been nothing more than a cover story to hide their real purpose of raising revenue by penalising unsuspecting motorists.

Naturally there appears to be a certain degree of truth in this allegation until you consider the simple fact that these idiots wouldn't have been fined if they hadn't broken the law.

Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the case of Tom Riall, chief executive of Serco Civil Government who was convicted of speeding at Sudbury Magistrates Court. Riall, who pleaded guilty to driving at 102.9mph on a 70mph road, was fined £300, banned for six months and had six penalty points added to his licence.

Quite frankly, with Serco having supplied more than 5000 'safety cameras' within the UK there are many things you might wish to call Tom Riall, but "unsuspecting" is certainly not one of them.

Speed camera boss in 100mph drive

Waccy-Baccy 'outs' Gordo

It looks like that "significantly better advice" Gordo seemed to be getting is limited entirely to 'new media' if the photograph accompanying the following article from the BBC is anything to go by.

Brown 'right' man for UK - Smith

Naturally this comes as no surprise to those of us who have always suspected that Gordo's true political affiliations were somewhat further to the right than he is prepared to admit.

Ironically, one of Gordo's highly expensive PR team is former BBC producer Nicola Burdett who was hired precisely to prevent this sort of thing. A task in which she is obviously having rather mixed results.

Phoul Play or just a Phoul smell?

This morning I had my attention drawn to Phorm's new "Stop Phoul Play" website in which Phorm attacks it's critics and accuses them of "conducting a smear campaign" in what I can only describe as a deranged frenzy.

The site itself is an uninspired combination of the worse aspects of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign, the copyright lobby's 'anti-piracy' propaganda and pre-war Nazi propaganda. It attempts to de-humanise it's critics by applying labels such as "Privacy Pirates", "The Angry Activist" and "The Concerned Consumer" to them in much the same way the Nazis did with European Jews.

A bit extreme?

Perhaps, but the use of de-humanising labels is extremely popular amongst those who's activities cannot stand up to scrutiny and while the Nazis were certainly one of the worst, they were neither the first nor the last to use such tactics. The copyright lobby's liberal use of the terms "pirate" and "freetard" to describe anyone opposed to their member's extortionate business practices is simply one example of this.

In this case it seems to have backfired rather badly and if anything, has only served to draw more attention to those critics and Phorm's alleged misconduct.

Quite frankly, the whole thing looks like something McBride and Draper might have cooked up after spending the entire afternoon in the pub. However the idea appears to have actually come from right-wing tory attack-rat Patrick Robertson, a 'PR consultant' who's own history of blunders rivals that of McBride.

Robertson's previous 'clients' include convicted perjurer Jonathan Aitken and it was while acting for Aitkin that he rather infamously faxed a confidential memo to the wrong number. A blunder he later compounded by surreptitiously obtaining the recipient's ex-directory phone number in order to leave a message on his answering machine asking for the fax to be returned.

This remarkable display of bad judgement can be found here:-

Stop Phoul Play

Some of the media coverage can be found here:-

The Register article 1
ThinkBroadband
PCPlus
The Guardian
The Register article 2

Honest guv, it just broke

Scattered amongst the usual rubbish in my mailbox this morning were a number of emails saying the e-petition I mentioned on Friday telling Gordo to 'get lost' was unavailable yesterday.

It's back now but it was an interesting time to have a computer failure don't you think?

With hindsight I suppose I should have expected something like this but I must admit, not being a technically minded person, the thought of what was almost certainly a deliberately induced breakdown simply didn't occur to me.

I have no doubt that Gordo would have simply ignored the e-petition no matter how many people had 'signed' it but a sufficiently large number would have been rather embarrassing to say the least. So by heading off the initial morning surge of people doing 'anything but work' in this way, the number can be kept down as the vast majority simply won't bother trying again.

This suggests that Gordo is getting significantly better advice on 'new media' than he was previously and judging by his past performance, it certainly isn't coming from Damian McBride.

A very good reason indeed

I hear that Town Councillor Chris Precious has been commenting on my somewhat 'erratic' posting history.

Well the reason for that is quite simple really. I'm not a lazy fat tory sitting on my arse in the Republic of Eire with my feet on the desk and my money in an offshore tax haven.

More tea anyone?

You tell him. No, YOU tell him.

Gordo may be in danger of being hung with his own 'web'-ing if an online e-petition started by Kalvis Jansons is successful. The petition's message is clear and simple.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign

I suspect that few if any seriously expect it to have the slightest effect, particularly as the whole e-petitions thing is a part of the same nonsense as LabourList. Not surprisingly, it's proving very popular and in the few hours it's been available, it's gained more than 3000 'signatures' putting it in the top 50 and the front page of the open petitions list.

Yes, I know. A drop in the ocean. But it would be rather ironic if the instrument of Gordo's demise was the very same 'new media' he was so desperate to manipulate and which back-fired so badly costing him one of his most trusted hatchet-men.

Whatever the outcome, the petition's very existence is almost certain to provoke a paroxysm of rage and I fully expect some of his staff will be sporting fresh bruises in the morning.


The Register's original article inviting Gordo to "Pick a Window!" is here or alternatively, you can just go straight to the petition here.