Journal of the Plague Years

Sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party are apparently canvassing Jacqui Smith as a Candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Britain.

We're told that she was an excellent chief whip: unfortunately, most of us ordinary folk will know very little about that. What we've seen has been her performance as Home Secretary: this page examines a little of that, in the impressions and opinions of one citizen recorded over much of her year in office.

The last Home Secretary whom I felt I really respected was Roy Jenkins (but then, perhaps I was just young and naive). Since then, we've seen some pretty unattractive characters in that post: I had thought that - in the face of some stiff competition - the depths of the illiberal were plumbed by Blunkett.

That was all before Jacqui Smith arrived: in my opinion, she's added a self-righteousness to the mix, together with an uncomprehending muddled thinking, which has made her tenure uniquely depressing.

Below, in blogological order, I've copied some of my articles referring to Ms. Smith which have appeared on this site. The flavour develops and matures as the different episodes inexorably follow (or precede) each other, together blending into some remarkably consistent threads...



From: Reactive Government...

14 July 2008 .

After Jacqui Smith's smug confidence just a few days ago that there had been no increase in knife crime, despite the conclusive evidence from our hospitals... the government is doing its headless chicken act, trying to be seen to act firmly in response - to the increase in knife crime.

Having suggested over the weekend that youths found with knives would be taken into A&E departments to see the effects of knifings, Jacqui Smith said today that that is not the plan. Frankly, she's an infuriatingly silly person. Out she came with her grand plan: never mind that the idea's been tried in the States, and found not only not to work but possibly even to worsen the situation; never mind that victims might not want to be exhibits; never mind that she hadn't discussed the idea with doctors involved, who've pointed out that they're already under massive pressure and can't divert their time to 'giving lectures'... does she have any idea what it looks like to announce these initiatives with great fanfare only to abandon them within days?

-/-

Added 15 July (in response to feedback): The possibility that there are members of the parliamentary Labour party who see Ms. Smith as a serious potential successor to Gordon Brown had, I admit, completely passed me by. I suspect that, because the idea is such a demonstrable nonsense, I must mercifully have blanked that bit out.

Because of my disdain, I have been accused of an ad hominem approach in my comments about Ms. Smith. I've rejected that, and I hope rebutted it, elsewhere on this site. I doubt that, had we met in the school staffroom, Smith and I would particularly have hit it off but, beyond that, I have no personal feelings about her either way - nor about her politics, save a feeling that she's rather muddle-headed while being given to self-righteous primness.

What's been written on these pages has resulted from my view, as a probably averagely well-informed citizen, that Ms. Smith's record as Home Secretary has largely ranged between incompetence and inanity, that there's something almost surreal about our toleration of her activities in that post and, I'll now have to add, that it's mind-blowing that anyone seriously believes she would be a suitable candidate for PM at this stage of our history.

-/-

(I reprised dome of the reasons why I felt the knifer-meets-victim idea would be counterproductive...) My problem with Smith is that she came out with this idea, her ('knee-jerk'?) reaction, at all. It may not be a requirement of a Home Secretary that he/she have some street-sense - although personally I would have thought that perhaps it should be - but it most certainly is a requirement of a Home Sec. that she have put advisers in place to stop her from putting forward such damn-fool suggestions in the first place, without careful thought.

The worst of it, of course, is that Smith seems to have been caught on the hop by a social crisis (a) which ordinary people have been pointing out for yonks and (b) for which the evidence has been available for years from A&E hospitals (the obvious place to ask) for anyone who cared to check.

She isn't fit for post.


A home-secretarial grasp of reality?

05 July 2008 .

Jacqui Smith may be quite the silliest Home Secretary this country's had in my lifetime, probably ever. It's hardly ad hominem to say so any longer, if indeed it ever was: I think the evidence of the past year is conclusive. In this week of half a dozen killings in London alone... having admitted that she now feels unsafe walking in the streets of her own constituency and presumably being aware of the rapid rise in admissions by hospitals of knife wounds, she smugly stated that there's no more knife crime now that in the past. [I hasten to add that however we choose to address the problems of violence which we clearly do face, I truly hope that nobody believes that Jacqui Smith's Home Office would be the place to look to for mature, reasoned action.] However, it has to be admitted that she's got guts (or at least gall): she voted against the wishes of her own prime minister this week - not that he was anywhere to be seen at the time; on a matter of principle, too: the right of MPs to go on claiming very large amounts of money in expenses, without due accounting or transparency, for their own use.

They say a country deserves the government it gets; but I don't deserve this.

Added later: Incompetent and silly, of course. Corrupt, too. There is no such thing as complicity in, or condoning of, corruption; if you're touched by corruption and your antibodies don't spring into action, you are corrupt. Ms. Smith, voting against her leader on this matter when she knows the mood of the nation (or, as Home Sec, bloody well ought to), is touched by corruption and has acceded to it without ensuring that we know that there are good reasons for her position; no matter what illusions she may have about herself, we can only infer that there aren't any.

[Added 16 July: despite her valiant efforts, the motion she voted for was substantially reversed today - the issue being forced by the opposition. Someone in the Indy, last week, referred to her corrupt vote as 'suicidally stupid'. All that and she ends up on the losing side!]

[Added 17 July: I'd completely forgotten: of course, she was one of those who'd been quietly paying a relative (her husband) a handsome stipend (40,000 pa) out of the public purse. Silly me. See Mourning for Cincinnatus below.]


It's the pursed, morally-certain little mouths that really wind me up.

03 July 2008 .

Hospitals say there are twice as many children being treated for knife wounds as five years ago, and the figures for knifings go on getting worse.

Jacqui Smith says, "You know... Let's be clear," that London is no more dangerous than it was (when?). This week there've already been a couple more deaths by stabbing in the street since Ben Kinsella's. One was four minutes walk from where Ms. Smith lived until a month or so ago.

Who has their ear to the ground: the hospitals who work there, or the apparatchik home secretary with the metaphorically (and sometimes actually) tight little mouth, wagging finger and lecturing tone? Tough one!

The security state, aground again, grinds on.

15 June 2008 .

More sensitive material gone astray; another lot of papers left on a train (the second this week) and a very senior police officer's laptop snatched from his car while he was buying a burger. Or something.

Mistakes happen, of course they do - though these reports do seem to be just a bit too frequent. What's insulting is the repeated assurance that nothing has got into the hands of all these tens of thousands of our citizens who the security services threaten us are just itching to destroy the fabric of our society (insulting because it's quite impossible to believe that everything lost is handed in to the BBC or the Independent, that nothing's been lost except what we're told about); and the endless advice that systems have been updated so that mistakes 'like this' couldn't happen again. (Until next week...)

Yet the Brown-Smith machine trundles remorselessly on with its prim-mouthed determination to database us all down to the colour of our undies and its promise of the sunny uplands of prudent Orwellian security for us all.

Added 17 June: Jacqui Smith's been reassuring us this week's events were unacceptable and that action's being taken to ensure that these mistakes don't happen again. So that's all right then.

From: Speaking Truth to Power. (And sacrificing Power for Truth.)

12 June 2008 .

Several people have commented on Harriet Harman's rather imbecilic nodding during the debate (on the 42-day detention bill) whenever someone she approved of said something she agreed with; did anyone notice how her clone, Jacqui Smith (whose speech was unimpressive, to say the least), appeared wholly bewildered when anyone talked about political values or debated on any sort of a constitutional level? (Such as when she was asked by a Tory about the threat under the bill to the principle of the separation of powers: she seemed completely flummoxed.) She's not just dire, Mr. Brown, she's actually quite thick; for Heaven's sake get rid of her.


Jacqui Smith has her script prepared. And rehearsed. Many times.

11 June 2008 .

Last month, Jacqui Smith was able to confirm to us that all departments had rigorously reviewed their security arrangements, so we could rest assured that the database on our ID cards would completely secure when the time came.

Appreciation papers of the highest restriction and sensitivity (which apparently shouldn't have been printed out at all, intended to be seen by only somewhere between 20 - 200 of the most senior and reliable people, as opposed to the third of a million plus minor officials who'll have access to our ID data) were left on a choo-choo this week. Fortunately, goes the party line, there was nothing to worry about, as the papers were returned intact (as have been all those discs, completed forms, photocopies etc. over the past year. Except the ones which haven't.) We have to be proud of how all this misplaced material keeps being found by honest members of the public who return it to the BBC.

Today, Jacqui Smith is able to confirm to us that all departments are rigorously reviewing their security arrangements, so we can rest assured that the database on our ID cards will completely secure when the time comes.

d'Ancona on Smith.

06 June 2008 .

Matthew d'Ancona, editor of the Spectator, on one of the most illiberal and uncomprehending of Home Secretaries this country has known (having indeed known one or two!): 'In a government stuffed with malfunctioning robots, nervous wrecks and preening Fauntleroys, Jacqui Smith shows every sign of being a fully paid-up member of the human race.' (Fauntleroys?)

I used to read the Spectator, although it longed ago passed East Ham. I finally gave up after Boris Johnson became editor (nice to see that he's already brought some of the values of that mag to his mayorship of our fair city - not). It must finally have reached Barking. Not that any member of an erstwhile socialist party should be too pleased to receive praise from the strongly right-wing Spectator at the best of times. [I was also a regular reader of the Salisbury Review, which at least had the virtue of intellect - I only gave up on that because it was like reading a diet of Lenin, but from the Conservative right.]


From : Harriet Harman, Whip.

26 May 2008 .

I was thinking Harman was (chief) whip; she wasn't, of course - that was Jacqui Smith... My defence is that those two are such clones that it was an easy slip to make.


Jacqui Smith, Blair Babe Clone and Total Prat. A rant!

09 May 2008 .

I regard ad hominem arguments with suspicion; in fact, I think that any coup to the person, rather than to their argument/politics, is a waste of time. Private Eye, which I read every week almost as my 'journal of record', has a side to it which leaves me cold: it's a pity that it's the satirical side, which many folk most enjoy.

So it really does quite vex me that I'm reduced to huffing and puffing at some of those we elect as our leaders (!) to so little effect that I end up resorting to disparaging epithets which in my heart I feel are beneath me... just like some of the folk I make them about... But, in the face of Jacqui Smith's most recent ill-conceived, cynical, populist, incompetent, illiberal and wholly repellent little gimmick, I suspect that I'm probably not being rude enough with regard to this particular Blair Babe Clone.

She's announced that she's going to form an 'action squad', whose job it will be to identify people who might be guilty of nuisance behaviour and 'harass' them. This won't have anything to do with those boring legal procedures, of course; the purpose is 'to ensure the tables are turned on offenders so that those who harass our communities are themselves harried and harassed.' This will be done by checking if they've paid their TV licence, car tax and insurance, council tax... (So those checks aren't made by the appropriate authorities as a matter of course? Despite the recent and threatening advertising designed to scare the wits out the elderly and vulnerable? Thanks for that tit-bit of information, Ms. Smiff...) Scary stuff, then...

You might ask; since when is it the job of the government to harass people? The manner in which this measure is presented, however, suggests that the government is way past asking that particular question.

You might ask; what respect for civil liberties is being shown by a home secretary who suggests an idea such as this? A government who sees it as part of its job to 'harass' people and to use that word (no matter how feeble the harassing may actually be)? The words 'intellectually bankrupt' spring to mind.

So yes, an epithet, to my shame... but Jacquiieiee is a prat. Unfortunately, due to her position - if not status - as home secretary, combined with her 'cleverness' but quite extraordinary lack of intellect or understanding, combined with our apparent inability to identify and excise dross, she's a dangerous prat.

And no, I'm not chattering class, living in a secure part of town; The 600-policeman invasion of the Blackstock Road the other week was my street; I know exactly what life is like lived with shitty neighbours, along with gangs, working-girls, junkies and their dealers, thugs, bullies... two of my own ex-students killed in the street (in different incidents) within 100 yards of my front door, the girl in the next door flat raped in her own bed last year and prostitutes working downstairs are only a sample of the local criminality of past few years, but the non-stop noise, the regular drunken shouting and fights are the sheer misery of some of the lives around here are every day.

So when I say that Goody Smith doesn't have the tiniest inkling of what's going on, I speak no politics because I know precisely whereof I speak.

[Added 17 July, while I'm reading through the site and gathering these gems: Reading this makes me realise that I make the Daily Mail look like a model of restraint. In any sane world, I would be embarrassed to let anyone know I'm having these tantrums - I certainly wouldn't publish them; but then, in a sane world, I wouldn't have them in the first place. I've been sorely tempted to delete this item altogether, and any others that might be like it, because I am embarrassed. But, quite apart from my self-imposed 'once it's written, it stays written' rule, I want to leave this outburst in the public domain because it reflects the frustration which I feel, and which I suspect I share with a deal of other folk, at my complete helplessness as I watch foolish political twerps get away with unbelievable stupidity without my having the remotest power to do anything about it.]


From: A constant plaint from your web-host is that the government is not guided by scientific evidence.

07 May 2008 .

(The government asked their own advisors, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, to investigate whether cannabis should remain a class 'C' drug or be reclassified to 'B'. The council found that cannabis should remain class 'C')... so Jacqui Smith has announced the cannabis will be regraded to class 'B'.

What was the point of asking for the scientific assessment? Smith says that she's decided on the wise course of action (but then the blair babe clones always say that what they decide is the wise course of action): it's obviously best, she says, to err 'on the side of caution.' On what basis does she make these pronouncements? Not, certainly, on the basis of the evidence!


From: Clone Time!

06 May 2008 .

TV news showed Jacqui Smith at the despatch box, with Harriet Harman sitting just behind. They were dressed identically, with identical haircuts, identical pearl necklaces, identical tight, dismissive expressions... it was a distinctly spooky and rather unsettling sight. Mind you, it may have been Harman who was speaking... or they may have been two totally different clones - it really is difficult to tell them apart!


Mourning for Cincinnatus.

26 April 2008 .

Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, has owned up (before she was found out anyway) that she is paying her husband a salary of up to 40,000 quid for 'research and assistance' out of the taxpayers' pocket. (A great deal more than the national average wage/salary, incidentally, and firmly among those who benefit most from the recent tax changes in the budget, unlike the millions on a whole household income of a quarter of this who had their taxes hiked.) Of course, she'll say it's legal (as why shouldn't it be, since in Parliament she can make the rules, with her fellow rotting fish). She's Home Secretary, and she obviously just doesn't get it (although clearly she got it well enough not to tell us about her cozy little arrangement until she had to)... she can argue it how she likes: it's corruption. Period.

She's not alone; for once public pressure, plus that of a few honourable MPs, has had some effect. As the new Great Stink becomes undeniable, it seems that two other cabinet ministers have come clean, another Blair Babe and the scion of the Benn family. (Tony Benn is quite not as guilt-free as he portrays himself but, nevertheless, he should be turning in his wheelchair). And over 100 other MPs. All parties.

And look at that list: David Davis, Tory home affairs spokesman; George Young, Chairman of the Commons' Standards and Privileges Committee; Sir Stuart Bell (responsible for reviewing parliamentary expenses); Peter Hain (q.v.); Michael Howard (lately leader of the Tory party). And of course there's Mammon Martin, the holder of the post that was once was the very proof of Parliamentary rectitude, now certainly not that... [and when you think of the men of old who once sat in that seat...] The list goes on - and that's just the ones we know about.

The People's Blair (q.v.) may well be relieved that he got out when he did...

A camera seen is a camera respected.

01 April 2008 .

We should not feel nervous of the cameras which ostentatiously watch us as we go about our business. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith assures us that they are there to make us safer. (A camera seen is a camera respected.)

There isn't (yet) the CCTV infrastructure in Lhasa, so Chinese officials and soldiers have to film the inhabitants in person instead. They too are doing it ostentatiously, They, too, assure the world that it is to make people safer. (A camera seen is a camera respected.)


From: Renewed Calls For The Death Penalty.

12 February 2008 .

Do you really trust some of our recent Home Secretaries with the power of life and death? Blunkett? Reid? Smith???

[Also, on 30 December '07: I have all sorts of other reasons (for arguing against the death penalty), ranging from the sixth commandment to the absolute certainty that no politician should be allowed that sort of power (a plea for clemency delivered into the hands of Blunkett? Or Reid? God forbid! Or Smith? Even the suggestion's a joke).]


Extracts from: Police Pay.

23 January 2008 .

The police are marching in the streets because of the rather shabby way they've been treated over their recent pay award; passers-by who may have no particular liking for the police are nevertheless offering their support. The issue for the police is not the money (which is not that much) but the principle, and it's clear enough: the police and the government agreed to go to arbitration; when the decision had been made, and apparently agreed by both sides, it was reported back to the rank and file. Only some days later did Jacqui Smith announce that implementation would be delayed for police officers in England (although not in Scotland).

(With 20,000 police officers protesting on the street:) Jacqui Smith, who either knew that the award would be deferred (in which case she's duplicitous) or did not (in which case she was improperly prepared at the time, weak later, or both), has nobody to blame but herself. For these and all her other transgressions (q.v.)... I don't see how she can last the course.


From: More Data Loss. Nothing To Worry About.

19 January 2008 .

The young men who crashed planes into the Twin Towers in New York, or who blew up trains and buses in London, are not to be called Jihadists, terrorists or suicide bombers. They are 'people committing anti-Islamic activities' - Jacqui Smith


Who needs The Graces? We have Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw!

15 December 2007 .

We have a police force that is under-strength; it also suffers from at least a degree of demoralisation. The government, presumably in recognition of these facts, awards it the highest pay-rise in the public sector (or so I believe, in combination with other rises in the last 10 years). This makes a nice change, since serious and dedicated officers feel that they have not been able to do their job because of the endless initiatives and targets from the self-same government.

Then, having made the award, the government delay it: the consequent reduction in pay to each officer is comparatively small, but it's enough for many officers to regard it as a gratuitous discourtesy. It seems likely that their federation would call a strike - if the police were allowed to come out.

But the police are not allowed to strike.

However; the prison officers (who are allowed to strike) seem to be heading for one next year.

So Straw comes up with a solution, which Smith says she'll go along with. We'll put police officers in to run the prisons - in effect, as blackleg labour.

I imagine that the obvious, inherent, crashing insensitively - and sheer, unbelievable stupidly - of this coincidence of events will be written about at great length. I only mention it here because I think it may the sort of mind-bogglingly ill-considered government action for which society will be paying in a very big way for a long time.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying the police shouldn't take over prison duties in the event of a prison strike - I don't know what else the government could do in those circumstances; I am saying that the government should not be choosing such a moment to muck around with police pay rises.

Jacqui and Jacky... neither seems to have the brains they were born with.


Internal Passports.

19 November 2007 .

Another freedom quietly eroded - again by Statutory Instrument, so that there has been no discussion in Parliament and so that our Home Secretary, the forgettable Jacquieiee Smith, does not have to waste time on the boring necessity of explaining or justifying her actions.

ID will now be required of passengers to take a ferry between two parts of the UK.

I'm sure that this didn't happen even at the height of the troubles a generation ago.

There is no difference in principle between catching a ferry from Belfast to Stranraer and catching a train from Luton to London, or a bus from Liverpool Street to Kensington High Street, or walking down to the local newsagent. So, why should the government draw one line rather than another? The answer is, of course, that it will keep redrawing the line, more and more restrictively, always with the best of motives, and they'll take all the advantages offered to them in this process by the statutory instrument.

Sorry about inconsistent use of capital letters: it rather depends on how irritated I'm feeling. Perhaps from now on I shall refer to the great-and-fraternal-leader as 'pm'... or 'brown'.


From: Perhaps, after all, it really doesn't matter.

19 November 2007 .

(About an article by the Independent on Sunday) ...so many government actions have passed with so little objection or comment (specifically mentioned was the apathetic response to Jacqui Smith's admission - after an attempted cover-up - that 10,000 illegal immigrants had been given security clearances up to and including protecting the PM) that the government is entitled to draw a very clear message - not to the advantage of our freedom.

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