The oldest profession

Put this in your diaries folks  – Thursday March 3^rd, Radio 5 Live 9.30pm – 10.30pm.

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith presents a documentary for the BBC entitled ‘Porn Again’ – an investigation into the porn industry in the UK - meeting those who make, watch and comment on porn. The subject matter itself is arguably worthy of an investigative documentary but it is the BBC’s choice of presenter which will no doubt leave and nasty taste in the mouth, a feeling of mild nausea to say nothing of seething anger amongst the hard working population of this country who still can’t quite believe how this former Minister escaped the attention of New Scotland Yard during the expenses scandal. But then again that’s exactly what the BBC intended. Stick this up your arse Tory voting middle England licence fee payers, we’ve got your money and we’ll spend it how we bloody well like.

We can only speculate how much the BBC paid Miss Smith for this venture but as for her suitability and qualification to deal with the subject matter at hand, well in her own words, “As I know from my personal experience, porn fascinates us – media and public alike. But we actually know very little about what it’s like to work in the industry and what porn is doing to our society, our children and our relationships”.

Let’s see just how long Miss Smith dwells on her ‘personal experience’ during this documentary, not long, if indeed at all I would suggest. But ladies and gentlemen the personal experience she refers to is, seemingly, enough to justify licence fee cash being handed over to Miss Smith to take us on a journey into the world of smut. An infinitely more relevant documentary for the BBC’s customers would surely have been ‘Why do MPs steal ?’ - disgraced former MP investigates malfeasance in Parliament, what it does to our society, our trust in elected politicians and our relationship with Parliamnent. In Miss Smith’s case the two subjects, porn and expenses abuse, are inextricably linked.

In 2009 who could ever forget the sordid tale of then Home Secretary ‘erroneously’ claiming on her MPs expenses, for two pay per view porn films watched by her husband, Richard Timmey. What Miss Smith will not want to recall is that her husband watched the porn in the comfort of the £300,000 family home in what was her constituency of Redditch, Worcestershire. This was the home that Miss Smith claimed to be her ‘second’ home for which she could, and did, claim £24,000 per year simply because she had declared her ‘main’ home to be the back bedroom of her sisters house in London. We will never know exactly how many nights Miss Smith spent with her sister, doing what sisters do perhaps, drinking wine, eating pizza, staying up late and then presumably opening up that pesky red box and doing the odd bit of Ministerial work on pressing matters of the day like immigration, policing, prisons etc.  

One thing is absolutely certain, according to the former MP for Redditch. She was not at the constituency ‘second’ home with husband Richard when for want of a better phrase he was, well . . . . spanking some of the £24K being siphoned from the public purse by his wife to keep Richard in food, drink and Kleenex.

Porn does fascinate men and women and it does not take a BBC documentary or Jacqui Smith to enlighten us any further. As for the former Home Secretary’s husband it was never a case of fascination with porn, more a case of boredom due to the lack of a proper job because don’t ever forget this – Miss Smith at the time was paying her husband, presumably out of the Ministerial £140K salary (boosted by the £24K ‘second’ home allowance), a handsome £40,000 a year to be her Commons Adviser. 

As Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith would have had at her disposal, aides, advisers and personal assistants following her every move. A little excessive and unnecessary you might think,  employing another adviser on £40K, who just happens to be your husband. And to do what precisely ? Re-arrange the paper clips, plump the cushions, walk the dog, read the papers, and for a treat, draw the curtains switch on the TV, select Channel XXX 
. . . . . . . . . . . and relax.

Mercifully the good people of Redditch did for this wretched couple at the last election but the BBC couldn’t resist inviting her back for an encore. If you live in Redditch, or anywhere else for that matter, enjoy the programme. Me, I'm washing my hair that night. 

Same meat . . different gravy

With supreme irony the Gray - Keys road show, tail between its collective legs, heads out of London and appears to be heading for Doha and the Qatar based Aljazeera Sports channel. Fill your boots lads, no fear of any anti sexism voices being heard out there.

It seems what was said by Gray and Keys was merely boys banter perfectly acceptable in the worlds inhabited by Jeremy Clarkson and Bruce Forsyth who offered, respectively, the following opinions, "we need to be more tolerant" and "you say these things for a laugh to relax". In a similar vein it was hardly surprising when wifey sprung to the defence of Keys - and how !
 

The kind of destructive & humiliating obscenities, which seemingly slip from the lips of her husband with ease, were according to her, "playful shenanigans" which are needed, apparently, to reduce tensions in the Sky Sports studio.

What is now known in acute celebrity embarrassment circumstances, as the Ron Atkinson defence ("I've got lots of black friends") was then dutifully trotted out by one of Keys' sisters. "He's got three sisters and a daughter and has the greatest respect for women" she pleaded.

Imagine the scene at the Keys' Christmas lunch table where relationships are a little strained. Good old Richard calls upon his trusty tension reducing skills . .

"So which one of my lovely sisters, for whom I have the utmost respect, has been smashed (sic) lately then?"

"Sprouts anyone ?" 

And relax  . . . . . . . . . . .   

350 . . . . . . and counting

"We have little intelligence on Iraq's CBW [Chemical and Biological Weapons] doctrine and know little about Iraq's CBW work since late 1998"

Joint Intelligence Committee, 21 August 2002, Butler Report, paragraph 292

"Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programmes is sporadic and patchy. Iraq is also well practised in the art of deception, such as concealment and exaggeration. A complete picture of the various programmes is therefore difficult"

Joint Intelligence Committee, 9 September 2002, Butler Report, paragraph 295

"The intelligence picture they [the intelligence services] paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative"

"For the preparation of the dossier we had a real concern not to exaggerate the intelligence that we had received. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to reflect the credibility of the information, and we rate the credibility of what we have very highly. I say no more than that"

Prime Minister's statement to Parliament on the launch of the government's dossier 24 September 2002

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons"

Prime Minister's foreword to the dossier "Iraq's weapons of Mass Destruction"

"I cannot bring myself to say that I misrepresented the evidence because I do not accept that I did"

Tony Blair - House of Commons October 2004

And now we know that Blair disregarded the initial advice of the Attorney General concerning the legality of an invasion. It truly beggars belief how the man sleeps at night.

Royalty . . . . my arse !

It's becoming a bit of a sport these days in the Lower House to publicly rebuke the Speaker. Not too long ago that would have been unthinkable because MP's used to have unqualified respect for the position and the person.

Is it too much to ask that sometime soon a person worthy of the position of Speaker will be elected and MP's will take the process of electing him/her seriously instead of playing cheap pathetic political games to score one over the opposition ? This of course was the spiteful game played by Labour members last year, unable to swallow the fact their man, Speaker Martin, had been forced to resign due to his incompetence. Punishment came swiftly in the diminutive form of Speaker Bercow, equally incompetent yet voted in by Labour with a resounding 'stick that where the sun don't shine' to the Conservatives.  Bercow is woefully out of his depth and displays all the same vindictive ineptitude of his predecessor and more. It is now quite frankly embarrassing the frequency of his overbearing headmasterly outbursts towards . . . .  well Conservatives mainly, who have had the audacity to challenge his inflated ego and sharp practices in the Chamber. Little wonder T-shirts are now in circulation amongst MP's carrying the message "you're not f*****g royalty Mr Speaker".

This is about as close to royalty, little man, as you are ever likely to get. 

And they're off !

You haven't even put that box of Christmas decorations back in the loft and the first industrial action of the year is about to be rubber-stamped. Red Len McCluskey, the man who brought out the BA trolley dollies in a series of strikes last year is at it again. This worn out Communist who idolises revolutionary guerrilla leader Che Geuvara and is soon to be installed as the general Secretary of Unite, the biggest trade union in the country, has now set his sights on bringing the country's fuel distribution network to a grinding halt. 

The justification? Well quite simply, in a grotesque throwback to the 1970's, Red Len wants to bring back a practice known as national collective bargaining whereby suppliers of anything not just fuel, are forced to accept a 'one price fits all' practice denying any opportunity for suppliers to individually negotiate competitive pricing policies. To make it all happen McCluskey is ready to bring out militant fuel tanker drivers causing untold misery to say nothing of putting some vulnerable sections of society at serious risk.

The end game, and there's always an end game - if Red Len achieves his goal of national collective bargaining - it puts him in a very strong position to call nationwide strikes at the drop of a hat along with all the other three figure salaried comrades in the trade union movement who are no doubt currently lining up their own excuses to call their members out and help bring this government to its knees. Vindictive doesn't even come close to describing the activities of some sections of the Trade Union movement when there's a sniff of revolution in the air. Remember the Winter of Discontent in 78/79 and the striking gravediggers in Liverpool? 

Ideally what these champagne communists desperately want is to co-ordinate and mobilise a General Strike and/or mass rally in London some time in March. We can all pretty much guess the outcome of this even before every union leader and Labour politician has hidden behind the same old 'it was the anarchists hijacking our lawful protest' mantra. The inevitable violence and mayhem will make the 1990 Poll Tax riot and the recent student actions look like a picnic in the park and they all know it.

It's only a matter of time before for the next union baron pops up spouting 1970's bollocks in order to justify their £100K + lifestyle. Which one will appear next in the line up of usual suspects ? Watch this space.

You beauty !

Back in November on the eve of the 1st Test in Brisbane - Australias posing playboy and rumoured to be strike attack fast bowler Mitchell Johnson was first up in the war of words proclaiming that England captain Andrew Strauss would 'crumble' under a barrage of bouncers. I can think of plenty of cricketers who did crumble over the last month and they were all wearing a floppy greeen cap. For the record Mitch, Andrew Strauss scored a total of 307 runs including a century and three half centuries for an average of 44 - all part of a triumphant Ashes winning team. 

Rippa !  

Oh happy days . . . . . .