Jacqui Smith "not up to being Home Secretary"!

Jacqui Smith told Total Politics magazine that she feared she was not up to being Home Secretary and wished she had been better trained for the role. She said she had "never run a major organisation" before accepting the job in 2007. "I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of those skills," she adds. A great scoop for Total Politics but I'm afraid she's given politics a totally wrong impression.

A Cabinet member is not there to "run a major organisation". They are there to effect the collectively agreed policy of the government. Civil servants run government departments. Jacqui Smith's role was to see that policy was implemented and that the Home Office was run properly - by other people. But heaven help us, it was NOT her job to micro-manage it!

If we are drifting into the realms of career politicians who see themselves as hands-on CEOs we will all be the poorer. As it is, this lot leak stuff to the press before the House of Commons hears of it. If Jacqui Smith was at fault it was because she had policies that were hopelessly inadequate, because she didn't ask the right questions or because she appeared not to be in control of her brief all the time.

Getting hook-handed terrorists off the streets is the job of a motivated politician. Whether one has run a whelk stall or the largest business in the world is neither here nor there.

ID cards pilot scheme for pilots!

It seems all the current policy stuff coming out from the government is Jacqui Smith's. This time she's on again about ID cards. The good city of Manchester is the first city where people can sign up for an ID card, should they wish to spend £60 on one. It is voluntary for Mancunians but it is not so for pilots at Manchester Airport. They will have to have one as a condition of employment. So will all the airport workers. This compulsion also applies at London City Airport. It the febrile mind of the Home Secretary, this compulsion is so that terrorists don't apply for jobs. What planet is she from? Does she seriously think Abu Hamza, the hook-handed horror of Islamic fundamentalism, is going to apply to work at Manchester Airport as a baggage handler? "Could you help me with my bags, my good man?" asks Margaret Rutherford type to the eager-to-please Hamza. Pantomime stuff?

Any person seeking to blow up the airport is going to recruit "home grown" terrorists who are "clean skins". No ID card is going to stop that!

And how come these cards won't be effective for five years. I would suggest to Mancunians not to bother. You'd be paying £60 for nowt!

Shock jock Savage to sue Smith

Jacqui Smith's list of undesirables included the shock jock, Michael Savage. She doesn't like what he says and he doesn't like what she does, or has done. So he's going to sue her and the government for defamation. Good luck to him, I say. Not because I think anything he says is right or wrong, but because he has a right to express himself, so long as he does not break the law of this country or his own.

The Americans have the right approach. They ban people from obtaining visas if they have a criminal record and they exclude people if they are wanted by their own countries. Jacqui Smith has just publicly announced that this chap Savage is a persona non grata in the UK because she finds his views objectionable. So she links him with terrorists and torturers. "To link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in league with Hamas murderers who kill people on buses is defamation," he said. Sounds like it to me.

Get yourself a good QC, Mr.Savage, and sue the woman big time! After all she's been pocketing cash from dubious expenses, so will be able to afford it. Have you thought of mentioning that on your show?

Banned for thinking?

Jacqui Smith has been popping up all over the TV screens this morning talking about why she thinks it's OK to ban certain people from the UK. Now on the surface, I may say well done to her, but then I had a further thought process and it doesn't seem so clever after all. Ms Smith is well placed to judge others for thoughts. It's the actions of people that count. And from her recent actions we know she is not so keen to adhere to all the standards of decency she is now trying to uphold.

I don't hold much time for the Muslim Council of Britain as I do not believe it is a truly representative body. However, one can always agree at times with those that we may often disagree with. Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB says what is absolutely right for me. He says, "If they step over the line and break the law, it's at that moment the law should be enacted, not beforehand. If people are keeping their odious views to themselves, that's their business. We should not be in the business of policing people's minds." Could not agree more!

These are odious views but then some people do have them. The UK has laws which should be obeyed by all entering the country. Some years ago the government banned George Raft, the Hollywood actor, from entering the UK because they said he had Mafia connections. The same was said by others of Frank Sinatra, but he was never banned.

I am concerned by the tone and implications of all this. The Government has introduced a "presumption in favour of exclusion" which means it would be up to the individual concerned to prove they would not "stir up tension" after arrival. Now what sort of Alice in Wonderland nonsense is that. You could no more prove that than prove you had a dream! It's the insidious control of it all that shocks me. And will it end there? What if some views that are now deemed offensive but not illegal are notched up to the banning level? Already the New Labour regime has tried to control the Christian Church over gay adoption, same-sex unions, and other issues.

Maybe we should have extra controls fitted at airports which can read our minds. "Sorry, sir, do mind emptying your brain over there. A lady from Redditch is going to read your mind!".

Immigrants get it from right and left!

You'd be wondering why so many would-be immigrants try so desperately to get into Britain. On the one hand (the right) they've got Nick Griffin sizing them up as potential "racial foreigners" and on the other hand (the left) they've got the hapless Jacqui Smith viewing them as potential terrorists and anti-social foreigners. Not much of a warm welcome there!

Most sane and rational people want a firm and fair immigration system. One that is palpably open to simple understanding and not bound up with so much red tape and regulations that "experts" have to decipher it all. The BNP has come up with some frightful tome called the "Language and Concepts Discipline Manual". This is apparently to keep the BNP faithful from straying into illegal talk but encouraging them to use words that convey the "message". Which is that if you have a skin colouring that is on the darker side of Robert Kilroy-Silk's you get to be put in the "racial foreigners" camp. A camp that may one day have barbed wire all around it.

This is a policy (well, not even a policy, really!) that is high on hatred and low on logic! Griffin has taken Humpty Dumpty at his word and made "racial foreigner" mean what he wants it to mean. All very distasteful.

Then we have the case of the twelve Pakistani students rounded up on terrorist charges, the very same ones that got Bob Quick to resign, only to find that the police can't charge them with anything. The whole thing appears to be a storm in a teacup. Or a cockup. Or worse.

Now that the police have done their bit, these students are still deemed unsavoury characters so have been turned over to the UK Border Agency. Jacqui Smith has become judge and jury and they are going to be deported. Nice one! If I were a Pakistani contemplating coming to study in England I'd have serious doubts running through my head. Because the way the expenses-cheating Home Secretary thinks, they are guilty just because they are Pakistani. This is utterly monstrous. She should have the guts to tell the Pakistan government that ALL their citizens are seen by the UK government as potential terrorists.

Some of them are protesting their innocence in court. It's the very idea that, because no charges were made, some other method needs to be used to "get them". This government is always spinning that they are fighting terrorism but mostly they are not. New Labour's bungling of security issues only feeds the very thing they are claiming to be against. Now Asians living in the UK are disturbed and upset by the thought that they are perceived as a trojan horse.

They must feel like they are in the Charge of the Light Brigade. "Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them...."

Policing the police!

Last night on Newsnight Jeremy Paxman leant across the table and huffed, "I thought you Tories were in favour of the police!". Damian Green quite rightly replied that in most situations that was correct. He had just been confirming that a police officer had suggested that he "faced life in jail if convicted of misconduct in a public office". Green said that he thought it "absurd" that such a thing had been said.

No right-minded Conservative is going to give the police a blank cheque to do or say whatever they want. On this occasion the officer who made the remark was being gratuitously menacing. It is this kind of behaviour that is getting the police a bad name.

Jacqui Smith is a hopeless Home Secretary. She does not appear concerned with the underlying problems that current policing is throwing up. It's bad enough for high-horse civil servants to use the "national security" card, but it's worse that the law enforcement agencies lack common sense and get into a lackey-type mentality of pleasing their political mistress.

What comes out of the Damian Green affair is that there was a crude attempt to scare him witless and there was a clumsy attempt to use the criminal law where civil law should have been used. This has been a divisive action.

It comes in the wake of the police raid on environmental protesters. 114 people were rounded up at a school at around midnight. Police found large amounts of equipment, including food and various devices used for climbing, cutting and locking on to machinery. They concluded that Radcliffe-on-Soar Power Station was going to be attacked. Quite properly, they felt arrests should be made. My troubling point is this. The police keep telling us they have "information obtained" but it appears that they cannot make arrests because the "evidence" isn't forthcoming. The same is happening with the Lancashire "terrorist" raid.

It's all a bit like schooldays. A teacher is lambasting the pupils because a personal belonging has been apparently stolen from a fellow pupil. "Who took Jones' satchel?" Nobody speaks! Silence ensues, with much eye contact to see who cracks first. When nobody does the teacher finally departs extremely miffed that his "informant" came up with duff stuff!

All these actions lead to mistrust on both sides. The police have a duty to keep us all free from crime and anti-social behaviour. The public has a duty to act as responsible citizens. But we now have so much blurring of the boundaries. The police have become politically corrected and some sections of the public feel only direct action works. We could end up like two sets of dogs in a park, eyeing each other up. That happened a bit at the G20 demonstrations. Some officers "up for it" and sporadically attacking the crowd. The police went into cover-up mode. Would their actions have come to light without YouTube?

Media find out that there's no Virgin on Jacqui Smith's TV!

Jacqui Smith has been caught out again. I wonder what it is with this woman that she can't fill in an expense form properly. She's in hot water again because her husband has been caught out watching "adult" movies on TV at home whilst she was out trying to count up illegal immigrants and check on absconding rapists. Now I'm not bothered about what hubby gets up to whilst she's out of the house. That's not the point. The point is that she is already up her neck in trouble over a second home scam. You'd think she'd have the wit to tell whoever was filling in these forms to read the wretched details first. Yes, she can claim for an internet connection - No, she can't claim for the movies that 'Im in Doors is watching.

Virgin Media is quite open about what you pay for. If you rent two films, then two films come up on the statement. Didn't it occur to the form filler to check if watching these films was covered by expenses? Or to query it, at least?

We can't keep on with this "Oh, I was tired!", Oh, I forgot!" or "Oh, I overlooked it!" rubbish. The "I've done nothing wrong" bit does not wash anymore. Everyone is clamouring for change. Cloth-eared Brown is moving like an intoxicated snail towards some sort of "inquiry". We need it sorted - NOW!

All that has happened because of Jacqui Smith's incompetence is that she and her husband find themselves in an embarrassing fix. If she'd bothered to shape up, we'd never know her husband watches porno flicks!

Second Home Secretary a chiselling cheat!

Jacqui "Jackboot" Smith has some answers to give. Richard Littlejohn knocks the chiselling cheat into shape. She's currently spinning that she's done nothing wrong. He puts it so well.

"Jachboot Jacqui will be investigated over her living expenses after all. What a pity it has taken a complaint from members of the public to shame the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner into action. Previously, he said the 'Second Home' Secretary had done nothing wrong in claiming that her sister's spare room was her main residence.

Only after two neighbours objected that she spent no more than two or three nights a week at her sister's South London house did the Commissioner, John Lyon, agree to act. None of this would have been necessary if, while she was in London, Jackboots used the £3million grace-and-favour Belgravia house available to the Home Secretary. It wouldn't cost her a penny. But then she wouldn't have been able to claim £116,000 in expenses from the taxpayer. "

In her mind she must have thought "Um, it's either £116,000 or it's nothing! I'll go for the spare room and shove it down as a main residence."

Can I suggest that the voters of Redditch give this woman a wide berth come the next election?

Expensive and Expansive Obfuscation!

Which is easier? Pulling teeth or getting straight answers about parliamentary expenses? I see Jacqui Smith is co-operating with the Standards Commissioner, John Lyon. In all these matters, somebody somewhere isn't being straight.

Either she spends time in London or she doesn't. Two sets of neighbours have differing views on this. One says not much time and another seems to concur with Ms Smith.

We need to get the issue of expenses sorted out once and for all. It's a bit rich MP's and Peers legislating for all of us, when they are fixing and fiddling as if the World was ending tomorrow!

Jacqui Smith the Expenses Thief!

Strong words? Yes, and I'm not alone in thinking she's done a typical New Labour action of thievery. Peter Oborne writes very well in the Daily Mail today. He says -

"My brother has a house in Wiltshire where his family lives, where his social life is based and where his children go to school. However, he works in London so most nights of the week he stays in the capital and sleeps at my house.

It's a very friendly arrangement, and every so often he makes a contribution to our household expenses.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, and her sister, Sara, have a very similar arrangement - only with one crucial difference.

My brother does not claim that my home is his 'main residence' - in the same way that Ms Smith designated her sister's three-bedroom terrace house in South London when she submitted her Commons expenses.

If my brother did so, I would consider the poor chap had gone soft in the head."

Ms Smith may not have done anything against the letter of the law but she has traduced the spirit of it and the morality of taking £116,000 for expenses on a house that isn't yours is highly questionable.

Oborne is right to raise this, because not one single MP stood up to say she had done wrong when she answered Home Office Questions. It's this culture that has to change. Ms Smith is a cheat and she is every bit as bad as a regular thief.

She lectures us on burglaries and petty crime, but she sees no harm or wrongdoing in pocketing £116,000 for using her sister's house as her own "main home". Something not right there!

Home Secretary in homes row!

Jacqui Smith is a right one to be in charge of those trying to keep law and order when she's running a racket on the side herself! She's been caught out claiming her sister's house as her own main residence and pocketing £116,000 in Commons expenses into the bargain. New Labour, Old Sleaze.

More about it here from the Daily Mail.

Big Sister is watching you!

The government's wonderfully worded Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will make available our emails to any public body which makes a lawful request for them. From March all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year. On BBC Breakfast News this was discussed. Some naive emailer responded with the classic "if you haven't done anything illegal what have you to hide" line. But this is stupidy of the first degree.

As the Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, says "This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to about 500 public authorities". He is very right. This is not about some avunculur schoolmaster looking out for his pupils, or a priest taking in information of a sensitive nature and not revealing it to third parties. This is about simple data with not a lot of clarity (no content will be revealed, yet!) being washed around Whitehall for transient ministers and contract staff in government agencies to wade through. What exactly they will make of it I do not know.

Emails can be sent to anybody. Are we to ask about the moral fibre of every recipient of the emails we send out? I'm waiting for the knock on the door because some person the police or security service is interviewing has me on their email list. It's absurd nonsense. This will tell them nothing. I suspect it is more about securing data for their own purposes. It will waste time weeding out all the people who "haven't done anything illegal so haven't anything to hide".

The Earl of Northesk also says "Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it, it's very difficult to recover." Hear, hear to that!

Jacqui Smith - a hopeless woman!

She takes the biscuit, she really does. She rabbits on about not interfering. No apology for Mr Green. She just allows her permanent secretary to do his stuff so long as he doesn't tell her anything. That way she can say she isn't "controlling things in a Stalinist way".

The woman is a shambles and must go for all our democratic sakes.

BBC Andrew Marr Show

Jacqui the Joke!

What is it with our Home Secretary? She is fixated by things she can't changed and in a dither about the things she can and should change. Everyone knows Labour are hopeless managers. Any form of identity information in their hands - well, I'd be very sure to know all I could about their motives.

Ms Smith is hung up over ID cards. 2012 is when she will have the cards available. She now has the brass neck to say, ""I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long." Who are these people? Has anyone been in her company when Joe Bloggs has popped up to advised her of his ID cravings?

She's in a parrallel universe! Anyway, by 2012 the people of Redditch will hopefully have given her the political needle, and we will all be saved from her fantasies.

Uncle Sam saw you drive from Bognor to Brighton!

For those who keep bleating about the anti-terror laws and how effective they are should think again. Saying, "well, if you haven't done anything you shouldn't be worried", and sounding all prim and proper about it is no good. Jacqui Smith is living up to her status as a typical prying New Labour Home Secretary. All apparatchik and no common sense.

She has discreetly (or by stealth!) introduced new measures which will allow images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, to be sent overseas to such august organisations as the CIA. The Daily Telegraph has uncovered her weasley ways. When she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access "real time" images from cameras used in the running of London's congestion charge, she did not imply that it could be used by "others". A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere. Typical New Labour. All spin and deception.

So when you are out for a drive this weekend with the family, give a wave to the cameras as you pass by. After all, Uncle Sam wants you to know he appreciates your co-operation.

Jacqui Smith talks up her border patrols!

I'm not sure whether I follow what Jacqui Smith is on about. I don't think Jim Naughtie on the Today programme did either. She's got this new agency (she starts one a month, it appears!) called the UK Border Agency. It a mishmash of customs wallers and visa checkers. What she hasn't said is who of us is going to be checked. Is it dodgy looking Osama bin Laden lookalikes or will it be your average Joe Bloggs? Are we all going to be questioned on our return to the UK? Just holding a British passport doesn't prove anything. I could have left the country by boat and come back by plane. I could have lived overseas for a time, which I did. She wouldn't have a clue where I'd been!

So the big question is this. Will it work? All these new powers she's giving to her minions are going to be useless unless they can excercise them. Who is going to be stopped? Is it all of us on a random basis? That could work. Ginger-haired people just as much as burka-clad females. No discrimination! Will it be just foreign passport holders? Or those with requiring visas? Who knows?

Jacqui Smith doesn't fill me with great enthusiasm. She appears to be a jobsworth. If she doesn't check those leaving the country how does she get her figures matching up? She doesn't, that's why she has no clue as to how many illegals are here, some of whom have been cleaning out her office!

I bet it'll be like Tony Hancock berating his landlady in the Radio Ham. She has complained about him going in and out of the house. "I don't keep on going in and out! I came home, I went out, and now I've come in again. I don't call that "keep going in and out". You saw me go out, you must have expected me to come in again!" Exactly. That's what we should say to these Border Agents!

Jacqui talks turkey!

Jacqui Smith is out of touch!

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has appeared on the Andrew Marr Show to dismiss claims by a fellow minister that the government is out of touch. She said Ivan Lewis was wrong. She had the brass neck to say that it was "fundamentally important that we listen to the British people". Since when has New Labour listened? Over Iraq, devolution, top-up fees, EU referendum, ANYTHING????

I say hold on, Jacqui! I'll give you a good example of political dumb insolence.

Ruth Kelly is supposed to be Transport Secretary. She has taken a vow of silence it seems, as British Airways fumbles over baggage problems. She's not even out of touch. She's out of hearing too!