Right, so Ken’s up before the beak today (The Standards Board) over his spat with a journo from the Evening Standard, which seems to be a perfect excuse for the Grauniad to go in crap reporting mode.

Here’s how the Graun reported this story back in February…

“Ken Livingstone has launched an extraordinary tirade against an Evening Standard reporter, comparing him to a “concentration camp guard” and branding his paper “a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots”.

Mr Livingstone made his remark that the reporter was “just like a concentration camp guard” after being told that the journalist was Jewish.”

And today we find them reporting a claim by Tim Morshead, the ‘ethical standards officer’ presenting the case against Ken that the journalist in question - Oliver Finegold - was ’shocked and offended’.

However, this an actual transcript of the exchange between Livingstone and Finegold.

Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did tonight go?

Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that doesn’t have a record of supporting fascism.

Notice something interesting here - Finegold comments that he’s ‘actually quite offended’ when Ken asks him whether he used to a German War Criminal before joining a Standard - a reference to the Daily Mail’s support for fascism during the 1930’s - a comment made before Ken was made aware that Finegold is Jewish.

Following the ‘concentration camp guard’ comment, which is the one most at issue, Finegold reacts by saying:

“Great, I have you on record for that. So, how was tonight?”

Not much sign of his being shocked and offended there, is there? In fact his sole concern would clearly appear to be getting the story - just doing his job…

…like Ken suggested.

A view further reinforced by his reply to Ken’s comment that:

“It’s nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots.”

To which Finegold replies:

“I’m a journalist and I’m doing my job. I’m only asking for a comment.”

Yeah, sure - the man is totally shocked and offended here isn’t he?

There’s a bit more to this story that doesn’t appear to be widely reported.

This incident took place following an event marking the 2oth anniversary of Chris Smith coming out a nd becoming the UK’s first openly gay MP.

Only a few days earlier, Smith - who’d retired from politics and public life by this point - was pretty much forced into a making a public announcement of his HIV status after a newspaper had made it known that it intended to reveal this information to the public.

Which newspaper?

Why, the Evening Standard, of course.

I smell the distinct stench of hypocrisy, don’t you?

ONE of the most prolific criminals in Sandwell is the young son of a British National Party councillor, it was revealed today.

Teenage offender Ricky Lloyd - who has been committing crimes since he was 12 - is in custody awaiting Crown Court sentencing for attempted robbery.

The Black Country Mail has now discovered that Lloyd’s father is Sandwell councillor James Lloyd, a BNP ward member for Princes End, in Tipton.

Meanwhile, over in Sheffield, a BNP demonstration against the Bishop of Sheffield - fuck knows what for - draw this massive crowd of BNP supporters.

I guess that’s what they mean when they talk of demonstrations turning ugly - although there no real turning involved here, is there?

First things first, let me point you in the direction of Dr Crippen and his excellent blog - if you’re wanting to know how and why the NHS is pissing money down the drain you’ll find few better sources of information.

All of which reminds me of one of my own brushes with the stupidity that is NHS Bureaucracy.

Quite a few years ago, now, I myself worked for the NHS - not on the medical side but in ‘Community Development’ - Community Development was what the old Health Promotion Units turned to when the government started paying GPs to do their own health promotion work in surgeries in order to aviod becoming redundent.

But that’s, to some extent, by the by and, heretical lot that we were, we actually tended to get some good work done, helped no end by working for a Director of Public Health who understood the value of trying to stop people getting sick in the first place and that that meant dealing with issues like crap housing conditions and all the shit that local factories used to pumping into the atmosphere, etc.

So what I did, for the most part, was information - much of it printed.

So here’s the deal. I got the job and with it - to knock up this information - I got an underpowered PC and some pretty decent DTP software; and budgets being what they were a new PC was out of the question so I talked the team leader into authorising the purchase of a bit more memory so that at least I could work at a reasonable speed.

So, being a bit of geek I do what any good public servant would do (so I thought) and hit the PC magazines looking for the best price I could possible get - which for the memory I wanted turned out to be about £75 from a company on the South coast. So far so good.

Then, I fell in the evil clutches of NHS purchasing…

I dutifully filled in the requisition papers, gave all the details and shipped it off the wherever it was they processed the orders…

…and about a week later I got a call from there to say there was a problem as I’d not chosen to go with one of their regular, approved suppliers.

Not a problem, I thought. This supplier was a good few quid cheaper than anywhere I could find and did a few good deals that might be worth keeping an eye on for future purchase, so just ask them to add them to the system and then place the order. Which I did.

Three weeks later and no memory has arrived - so I phone the supplier, only to get the reply:

“What order?”

Riiiiight!

Back on to NHS supplies to find out what the fuck happened to the order only to find out that this business of approved suppliers is a bit more complicated than was first apparent, the supplier I’d specified couldn;t be added to the system after all and would I like to use one of their usual suppliers instead.

‘Fuck it!’ I thought, ‘You’ve got me’ and agreed.

Wait another couple of weeks and wahey! The memory finally arrives, followed by the invoice a couple of days later…

…at which point I find out that the £75’s worth of memory I tried to order from elsewhere has now cost the project a little over £150 (in the meantime the market price of memory had dropped and the supplier I had originally wanted to use was selling at just under £70).

And what, you might wonder, was the problem with this supplier?

Nothing more than the fact that it only offered 21 days credit terms on purchase orders while companies on the NHS approved suppliers list got there by agreeing to 60 days credit terms - and seeming also by not making too much a fuss if it took anything from 90-120 days to settle the bills.

That’s bureaucracy and the joys of centralised purchasing for you.

Over at Chicken Yoghurt, Justin’s finally managed to figure out exactly what Charlie Falconer’s job is…

…he’s the Minister for Shite.

Devil’s Kitchen’s also very good on this.

There will be no public inquiry into the July terrorist attacks on London.

…Mr Clarke believes such an inquiry is not justified because it would duplicate work that is already being done by MPs, and could drag on for years.

Hang on, lets look at the powers that the Safety Elephant now has over inquiries under the provisions of the Inquiries Act 2005:

8. Suspend or terminate an inquiry.
9. Withhold the costs of any part of an inquiry which strays beyond the terms of reference set by the Minister.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are involved in a murder investigation, that is a very active investigation. Secondly we are looking at potential future threats … and that is a very important thing not to be distracted from.

Err… Safety? I hate to say this but the guy who did the bombing on 7 July are all dead, and the one’s from 21 July have all been arrested.

And in any case, you seem to have forgotten about powers 5,6 & 7 (above) which can be used to prevent the public disclosure of information that might compromise on-going investigations.

“Thirdly, the time factor. I have always been a sceptic … of the length of time that inquiries of this kind do actually take and the distraction which they offer. And finally, of course, a number of committees … are [already] looking at various aspects of this.”

It’s reassuring to know that you think that public inquiries, one of the few methods available which offer any prospect of bringing/holding the government and/or state to account are such a ‘distraction’

Now do you understand why I’m rather leery of simply leaving matters such as this to committee of the House of Commons, in particular, when minutes such as these so clearly demonstrate partisanship in operation?

He added, however, that he thought there was a need for a narrative of what happened. Mr Clarke said that, although the bombers were dead, there were still questions over how they operated and whether they acted alone.

But, weren’t you just saying that there’s a very active murder investigation going on, which is one of the reasons why we can’t have a public inquiry?

Remember the little matter of Chinook ZD576? No less than three independent inquiries, including a special committee of the House of Lords, have found the ‘official’ RAF verdict of gross negligence against the aircrew to be unsupportable, discredited and wholly unsustainable in law, yet even today the Ministry of Defence will not admit that the verdict of the original inquiry report – which even the RAF’s own investigation does not support and which was imposed by two senior officers (Air Vice-Marshalls) on the strength of nothing more than their belief that seniority meant they knew best – was wrong.

The home secretary was asked why the UK’s security alert level was dropped five weeks before the attack. He said the security services had not been aware of the attack in advance and that people wrongly thought the intelligence services knew everything.

Speaking of ‘dropping the ball’…

Mr Clarke accepted that if the narrative was conducted by a senior civil servant it would not be independent of the government. But he insisted the government was not trying to cover anything up. “Certainly, there is no question of a cover-up of any kind,” he said.

Maybe there is no question of a cover up but, as some of your colleagues are so fond of reminding us when pitching oppressive legislation like the Identity Cards Bill and the Terrorism Bill, if you’ve nothing to fear then you’ve nothing to hide.

Welcome to the Ministry of Truth.