Suspicious Package

In the immediate wake of yet another Labour scandal, we are suddenly issued with a heightened Terror Threat from the Home Secretary. What sparked the need to emit this new warning? A genuine increase in the level of threat; a true desire to protect the electorate; a reaction to specific new intelligence?

Not according to security analysts, including Dr John Gearson, himself a government security advisor. "I'm not clear the risk is greater now than it was last month or will be in January" Gearson said on Sky News this morning. He also stated that the current anti-terrorism policies are failing and the "biggest failure of the last 7 years" was that the number of people involved in terrorism in Britain was increasing.

Of course, the real reason that this terror threat was issued today was to divert attention away from Labour's blatantly illegal fund-raising activities. The Electoral Commission has now asked the Metropolitan Police to investigate after it became clear that Labour received more than £650,000 in secret donations, contravening the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act of 2000, promoted by the Vile Master Criminal and Gordon is a Moron as "necessary to combat Tory sleaze".

Gordon is a Moron's leadership campaign was sent a cheque for £5,000 by Janet Kidd, money which it is now known was being offered on behalf of David Abrahams. It has now emerged that former Labour MP Chris Leslie, Gordon is a Moron's leadership campaign co-ordinator, tore up Kidd's cheque when he "discovered that no-one in the campaign team knew who she was". But Harriet Harman accepted a £5,000 donation from exactly the same source during the deputy leadership race she eventually won claiming she had no idea the money really came from Abrahams and had accepted it on the basis that Mrs Kidd was a known Labour donor. A fictitious claim as Kidd was not a known donor. It now also appears that the person who put Harman's team in touch with Mrs Kidd was none other than former Labour MP Chris Leslie, Gordon is a Moron's leadership campaign co-ordinator.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Qinetiq Energy

Having previously reported on the CDC / Actis debacle, the most shocking of all Labour's privatisations, it seems that Taxpayers have again been deprived of tens of millions of pounds by yet another, while the civil servants who architected the deal have pocketed over £107m in return for their investment of just £540,000.

A third of Qinetiq was sold to the US private equity group, Carlyle, for £42m in 2003. Lord Moonie, the minister behind the original sale to the US buyout firm, said that he tried to delay the deal. Stock markets had slumped and Lord Moonie felt that the Ministry of Defence would not receive a decent price for its shareholding. But he was unable to resist pressure for the sale from the Treasury, including direct influence from Gordon is a Moron, chancellor at the time. "We were reluctant to proceed with the sale, but a combination of the Treasury and the fact we needed the money for items in our budget persuaded us to go on with it" Lord Moonie said.

Carlyle's one third of Qinetiq grew in value to £372m, giving it a nine-fold return on its money. Qinetiq's two most senior executives, chairman Sir John Chisholm and chief executive Graham Love, made particularly spectacular gains. Chisholm invested £129,000 in the company and now has shares are worth £23m. Love has seen his £106,000 investment grow to £20m. The National Audit Office uncovered that Qinetiq's bosses were allowed to negotiate the terms of their own incentive scheme with Carlyle while the private equity firm was bidding for the business.

Once again, the government has sold off a valuable national asset for a pittance at the taxpayer's expense, providing huge profits for the purchaser and in particular, the senior civil servants involved.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Controlled Media

I really don't know what to say. Only 40 or so hours after what is the biggest political scandal in British history, the loss of almost half the population's deeply personal data, the story has been buried by our major news agencies. Neither the BBC nor Sky websites see the story as big enough to even warrant a mention on their UK news front pages. Instead, they have both opted to promote the non-story of potential ID theft from social websites. A story planted by the government and accepted by our pathetically maleable news network.

The catastrophic loss of 25 million people's personal details is without precedent and in direct contradiction of the Data Protection Act. But apparently this is not as big as "Bail Refused For Singer's Husband" or "Marilyn Manson Accused Of Burying Skeleton". Independent media? I doubt it.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

General Bonus

General Practioners, and there's quite a few of them, now earn an average of £100,000 per annum. Well deserved most probably but bear in mind this represents an increase of £30,000 in the first two years of the new contract. A contract that does not require drop-in clinics, home visits, emergency care or a maximum doctor-to-patient ratio. By comparison, the average salary of a hospital registrar is less than £40,000 a year.

In the past, Gordon is Moron and the Vile Master Criminal have reserved these kinds of super-inflationary rises for those involved in their quango empire as I have previously discussed. The current deal rewards General Practitioners with bonuses for hitting targets such as testing blood pressure and asthma care.

Does this push GPs to focus on point scoring instead of individually tailoring care? Many doctors, academics and the British Medical Journal think so.

Under the deal, which started in 2004, almost 35% of GP income is linked to hitting targets under the quality and outcomes framework (QOF). The rest of their pay is made up of the "global sum", which is effectively a basic salary. Statistics show that GPs have been particularly successful in hitting the targets in the last year. No surprise there ... if you measure people in a particular way, they will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Experts, led by Dr Iona Heath, a GP at London's Caversham Group Practice, said "the targets had diminished the responsibility of doctors to think". Instead, they said, GPs were "encouraged to focus on points scored, thresholds met and income generated to the detriment of patients".

They said three quarters of the population do not have the diseases covered by the contract and it was too focused on treatments rather than outcomes. Until the increase in process is translated into tangible outcomes, such as diabetes complication rates or incidence of heart attack or smoking-related deaths, the benefits and cost-effectiveness of the exercise cannot be established.

They also said the most "socially-disadvantaged people are at risk of receiving proportionally less attention". The authors pointed out that the contract acted as a disincentive to work in the most deprived areas as people there tended to be sicker and it was therefore harder to hit the targets.

One of this government's manifesto chapter headlines was "Our NHS: Free to all, personal to each". The facts show that our NHS is costing us all more and is less personal than ever before. The management overhead has grown beyond heteromorphic and all we have to show for it is impersonal care, veterans dying on dirty wards and worthless Chief Executives of failing NHS Trusts receiving astronomic pay-offs in return for dishonorable failure!

Bastards ... slimy bastard all over the world!

ID Cards, Part Deux

Only a few hours after I published this morning's post commenting on the personal data security concerns at government departments, puppet chancellor Alistair Darling was forced to make an emergency statement to Parliament disclosing that the good ol' tax man has "lost" two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 years old.

The Child Benefit data on the discs includes the name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and bank account details of 25 million people.

The discs were being sent to the National Audit Office via HMRC's internal post system operated by the courier TNT. However, despite their extraordinarily sensitive contents, the package was not sent using either recorded or registered delivery. The discs never arrived at their destination. Furthermore, despite the Puppet Chancellor being informed of the situation on 10 November, he kept the disaster hidden for ten days giving any crooks in possession of the information plenty of time to rape your bank account and apply for a few credit cards in your name! Aside from the obvious, I have two fundamental questions:

1. Why on earth is HMRC sending CDs around in this day and age?
2. Why are all our personal bank details being sent to the NAO in the first place?

Surely, after this catastrophe there can be no confidence whatsoever in the vast centralised databases needed for the compulsory ID card scheme. Start lobbying your MP now before Gordon is a Moron pushes it all through on the quiet. Even by the civil service's woeful standards, this level of incompetence is beyond staggering.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

ID Cards

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the UK, worth almost £2 billion per year. If you do pretty much anything on-line, sign up for shop loyalty cards or dispose of personal documentation without first shredding it, you are leaving yourself vulnerable. I have written previously about the Empire of Evil sharing your data with the government and reports of ID theft through the use of old bank statements and suchlike are trotted out on an almost daily basis.

What has this to do with Identity Cards you may ask? My point is simple: The one sure way to facilitate ID theft is to collect everybody's personal, professional and biometric details in one place and give the responsibility of securing all that critical data to a government department!

For example, yesterday's BBC Watchdog program exposed several incidents where personal data had been lost, mailed to complete strangers and over-written by none other than HM Revenue & Customs. In addition, it came to light that they had issued National Insurance numbers to multiple people. This unique number governs the national insurance and tax you pay, the size of your pension, any benefits you may be entitled to, etc. In fact, the official figures for 2005 reveal there were almost 2,000 reported cases of NI numbers being used by more than one person. Imagine how large the real figure must be! Furthermore, the Inland Revenue has just admitted to losing a CD last year containing the confidential details of over 15,000 people.

The debate on ID Cards has gone quiet but the policy is still being actively pursued by Gordon is a Moron and is simply going to be forced upon us. I have yet to see a single shred of tangible evidence to support the claims that these cards will aid the prevention or detection of crime, terrorism and anti-social behaviour. Even the government's official promotional material states "the National Identity Scheme cannot prevent terrorism" and simply states without any further explanation that it will "act as a deterrent". How exactly?

The National Identity Register will be the single most dangerous asset for ID fraudsters giving them a one-stop shop for everything they need to rip you off. As HM Revenue & Customs have shown so diligently, the last people you want securing all this critical personal information is a government department.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Value For Public Money?

Ofcom are the publicly-funded telecoms and broadcasting regulator. How would you describe their performance over the last year? The year in which telephone-based voting fraud has been uncovered at the BBC and ITV worth millions of pounds. The fraud at GMTV alone generated revenue of £35m, peanuts compared to those involving Ant and Dec and The X Factor. However it was not, as you might think, Ofcom who discovered these scandals. Despite it being their primary purpose for existence, Ofcom only intervened once this chicanery had been exposed by journalists and the Serious Fraud Office had said it will investigate. So, the answer to how well Ofcom have performed ... pretty damn poorly in my opinion!

You might think, therefore, that those in charge at the publicly-funded regulator are paying the price for such woeful performance. Hah! The former chief executive, Stephen Carter, bagged £400k last year and has pocketed another £250k in only eight months this year, while on gardening leave! Ed Richards, a former advisor to the vile master criminal Blair and the new chief executive, has earned nearly £400k during the same period. Even Dominic Morris, who is Richards' office manager, received more than £200k. Kip Meek, Ofcom's chief policy partner (whatever that is) left last year and was paid £125k for five months' gardening leave. Does this strike you as good value?

Let's look at Royal Mail. While not strictly funded by the tax-payer, it is responsible for delivering a public service that every single one of us needs in our daily lives. Repetitive strikes, first class mail taking 3 or 4 days, more mail lost than ever before, second daily deliveries cancelled altogether, increases to the price of stamps, the list goes on. How much would you say the chief executive that has managed this debacle is worth? Well, Adam Crosier saw his remuneration rise by 21% to £1.25m, for a whole year!

How about the BBC? Most definitely publicly-funded and given the latest license fee negotiation, apparently all we can look forward to is repeat after repeat and the odd celebrity-based reality dross. Perhaps programming might be better if we weren't paying director-general Mark Thompson £788k and Jonathan Ross a staggering £6m per annum.

John Tiner, chief executive of the publicly-funded Financial Services Authority, saw his package increase by 14% to over £650k last year. I have written about the FSA's woeful performance previously.

Unfortunately, the list of unworthy cronies pocketing vast amounts of your money is only likely to increase under Gordon is a moron. In the Queen's speech last week he announced seven new publicly-funded bodies to be created in the new parliamentary session. Despite the Vile Master Criminal's 1996 pledge to consign them to the "dustbin of history", there has been a bewildering increase in the number of quangos under this government. There are now nearly 900 with 30,000 members costing the tax-payer a mind-boggling £340m every day, a stupefying increase of 60% in less than four years.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Barclays Bankrolling Mugabe

British bank Barclays is bankrolling Robert Mugabe's vile regime in Zimbabwe. In only the first 6 months of this year, Gordon is a Moron's favourite bank have lent approximately £750m to Zimbabwe's new landowning elite.

Bastardlays are desperately trying to hide their illegal lending to five of Mugabe's ministers, each named in European Union sanctions. They include Didymus Mutasa, the national security minister who helped orchestrate the land-grab policy that left 4,000 white farmers without livelihoods and homes. The farms now funded by Bastardlays were forcibly taken by Mugabe's mobs and distributed to key figures in his regime, including Mugabe himself. The land-grab proved a disaster with many highly productive farms being run in to the ground and leaving huge numbers of the population on the brink of starvation.

Despite this and worldwide condemnation, Bastardlays, infamous for its active participation in apartheid South Africa, has recently been opening new branches in Zimbabwe, where it made £34m profit last year.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!