Fitaloon at MicroShaft

First from Mandrake in the Telegraph.

Mandrake hears that one of the Prime Minister’s officials telephoned the British embassy in Kabul before the Conservative leader visited troops in Helmand Province in December to request that it did not co-operate with him.

“The aide made clear that Cameron’s trip should not be a success,” says my man in the Number 10 bunker. “He said there should be no ‘media availability’.”

Happily for Cameron, the request was ignored by officials and he was photographed meeting troops in Helmand.

Brown has been criticised for using previous military visits for party-political purposes. In 2007, he made his first trip to Iraq as Prime Minister in the week of the Tory party conference.

A No 10 spokesman denies the claim. “The embassy provided full support,” he adds.

Sounds just like the sort of thing Gordon would do, Happily it looks like the Military ignored his requests.

Contrast with this story from Michael Yon.

WAR TOURISTS, a footnote: Gordon Brown just hit Afghanistan again. Last year, several British officers told me that when Gordon Brown visited in 2009, the British military resisted helping Mr. Brown by not providing airlift. They said US helicopters had to ferry Mr. Brown. I do not know where the truth begins and ends with those statements, other than that British officers told me this as truth. Please recall that I was kicked out of British embed last year, apparently for raking the British government on helicopter shortages. (Some little birds have told me that I’ll likely have better friends in the next British government. Did meet with a British officer yesterday about embed during summer.)

Oh the Irony!

How Gordon Brown tried to ‘ambush’ David Cameron’s visit to Afghanistan – Telegraph.

According to the Telegraph

What has been preoccupying Gordon Brown these past few days? The progress of the Moshtarak offensive in Afghanistan? Our strained relations with Israel? The threat of a double-dip recession? Of course not. The Prime Minister’s focus has been on a quite shameful attempt to sully the reputation of a charity that has dared to confront him over allegations of bullying in Downing Street. Those who think that this is a dangerous distraction from the true business of government are missing the point. Day to day tactical advantage is the business of government under Mr Brown.

Read the whole article to get a flavour of the disdain they have for the Bully Boy. Their conclusion is

Mr Brown cannot have it both ways. He wanted us to judge him on his character. Well, that is what we are doing. At the weekend the Prime Minister effectively launched Labour’s re-election campaign with an appeal to voters to “take a second look at Labour”. Most will think they have already seen quite enough.

Recently the Telegraph ha been more Labourgraph than Torygraph, has it changed it’s mind again.

Brown and Labour show their true character – Telegraph.

The Scotsman has a story on the delusions of Gordon Brown and AV voting. It has this to say

The Prime Minister said he wanted to hold a referendum next year on whether MPs should be elected through an “Alternative Vote” system, whereby candidates would be ranked by voters. In short, he is calling for a parliamentary vote to decide on a referendum vote, which will then decide on a voting system at a general election. Downing Street insisted yesterday it could push through the reform before the election, but Labour sources were conceding last night that

Mr Brown’s moves were designed primarily to “out-flank” the Conservatives on electoral reform ahead of the campaign.

So in fact this was another of Gordon’s dreamt up policies to try and draw out the Tories so he could try and get one-up on them.

Of course Electoral Reform was one of Labour’s 1997 promises, so far they have conveniently forgotten about it for General Elections until now in 2010 and three months before an election they will lose, they dredge it up in some weird hope that it might buy some votes from the public, or could bring the Lib Dems onside if miracle upon miracle they achieve a “hung” parliament.

However as usual with one of our esteemed leaders plans  there is a large hole in his argument, one that goes back a few years to when Blair and Paddy Ashdown were talking about electoral reform until they encountered the “Clunking Fist” of Brown. As Ashdown recollects conversations with Blair about PR/AV went like this

“Paddy, I like it, I just can’t it get it past Gordon”.

Cameron used this line today at PMQ’s to great effect after asking Brown what first attracted him to AV. The response brought hilarity to Parliament as all sides of the House enjoyed a wee laugh at Gordon’s expense.

Of course none of  this explains why I have titled this “Second Choice Politicians”. Well that comes down to what can happen in AV elections. In AV we ask voters to rank their preferences with a 1,2,3.. etc . So that if nobody gets 50% of the vote we discard the candidate with the least votes and distribute his/her 2nd preference to the remaining candidates. This goes on until a candidate has 50% of the vote.

All sounds wonderfully good until you think about what happens to the votes of the candidates that are rejected. Voters have expressed their preference for a candidate then receive what is basically a second vote for their next preferred  candidate and so on. This means that someone who votes BNP (idiots) can end up with their vote going to the Labour Party directly. So what we have now is the possibility of someone who came  second or third in first  place votes, getting a lot of peoples 2nd and third preferences and passing the person with the most 1st preference votes.

This means that we have a candidate who has won with votes of people who had made them their 2nd 3rd or even 4th choice. To my mind this is a joke. It promotes and is biased in favour of candidates who pick up second and third preferences. It penalises the independent-minded, and boosts the also rans and mediocre candidates. It makes sure that we get “Second Choice Politicians”. I assume this is what Brown wants so that he can demonstrate to them his superior abilities.

Time for a Change.

Gordon Brown slated over vote reform plans – Scotsman.com News.

I can’t believe it I agree with 80% of an article from Polly Toynbee. That is a rare miracle as generally all she does is make my blood boil.

Brown has scuppered a fair, sensible and long-term plan for care of the elderly according to Polly Toynbee.

According to Polly

Sure enough, it was too good to be true. Gordon Brown, eager for an eye-catcher for his party conference speech, made an extravagant promise of free personal care at home for all those with “critical” needs. It blew the green paper out of the water by offering what the green paper and most experts agreed was impossible.

So after yesterday’s giveaways and delusions on Defence,  we have this attempted giveaway on the NHS despite the fact that experts and even his own Minister Andy Burnham had agreed was impossible.

Brown is a deluded man and we need rid of him as soon as possible.

Time for Change.

via Free care sounds nice, but why redistribute to the rich? | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian.

This will be another problem that Gordon will have to face up to (Of course he might do a Macavity) this week. As usual with any story these days involving the Clunker it’s not good news and will bring the Armed Forces sharply back into focus for this disastorous Labour Government.

As the Sunday Times says

GOVERNMENT culpability in risking servicemen’s lives will be thrust to centre stage this week by the inquiry into the causes of the RAF Nimrod explosion over Afghanistan that killed all 14 on board.

There is intense government concern over Tuesday’s RAF board of inquiry report, which is likely to raise new doubts over Gordon Brown’s support for the armed services. The aircraft, which dates from the 1960s, was flying only because its replacement was delayed until 2010 to save money and a number of warnings about the risks were ignored.

The aircraft had a history of fuel leaks in the bomb bay, caused by pressure spikes in the air-to-air refuelling system.

The inquiry believes that the catastrophic explosion, west of Kandahar, was brought about by fuel leaking into the bomb bay, where it was ignited by hot air from a fractured pipe. That led the No 7 fuel tank at the base of the starboard wing to explode.

“The lack of safety equipment is a direct result of a culture of poor risk management that is endemic among senior officers and MoD officials and is largely driven by lack of funding.”

The MoD and senior RAF officers ignored repeated warnings of fuel leaks and fires on board the aircraft.

Jimmy Jones, a former RAF engineering officer who worked on the Nimrod trials, said: “If the MoD had acted on BAE Systems’ recommendations, those 14 crew members would still be alive today.”

In November 2004 a hot air pipe in the bomb bay of a Nimrod fractured as the craft came in to land at RAF Kinloss, Morayshire, blasting hot air onto the No 7 tank. An inquiry into that incident found the hot air would have been at least 50C above the spontaneous ignition point of the Nimrod’s Avtur fuel, which had begun to boil in the tank.

Disaster was averted only because the aircraft was on its way back to base. In his report on the incident, the station commander at Kinloss warned of more “unexpected failures” due to the aircraft’s age.

XV230 was one of a small number of Nimrods used to feed crucial live video of the battlefield direct to commanders in Afghanistan.

Nimrod’s air-to-air refuelling system was fitted as a quick fix in the 1982 Falklands conflict.

In March 2006 a report by QinetiQ, the defence consultants, blamed the Nimrod’s age and the “intense” way in which the aircraft were flown for what it described as a “critical” structural problem. The warning was ignored – with fatal results.

I have blogged on this and other problems with the over 40 year old Nimrod on a number of other occasions, most recently last month, when a similar Nimrod almost had the same fate and yet still had not had safety updates fitted.

Clunker Brown keeps trying to tell us he is “Honouring the Covenant” but he never actually shows us how. Honour to him means dropping colleagues into the doo-doo and then turning his back on them in the vain hope the problem disappears.

Nimrod crash puts No 10 on spot – Times Online