Very interesting article on Sky News today, that George Clooney has no intention of becoming a British politician.  He says he thinks that the parliamentary debates are interesting and fun, but he can never work out which side won.  He also said that it’s a lot different to US politics where they don’t have the same kind of “Order, order” system.

In my mind, figuring out the winner of a parliamentary debate is pretty easy – it’s a little like a rap battle.  And whilst this is confusing at first, it does make a lot of sense.  I mean, in rap battles they slate each other’s rapping skills, but in parliamentary debates, they slate each other’s political skills.  And sometimes that makes it a little more fun.  Plus, unlike rappers, politicians almost always know history of their “opponents” and sometimes it’s personal history.  Which makes for an even better fight.

Some say that it’s a bit childish – I personally think it brings a bit of life to what could be a stuffy and quite boring system.

Ok, so we all know about the 99% movement, part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  But there is another group.  The 53% who don’t like what the 99% movement are doing.  But here is the thing – the 53% tend to be reasonably successful, tend to be business owners and tend to be older.  Or people who want to be martyrs.

And that is what annoys me.  The martyrs are the really annoying ones.  Because they are the ones who are saying “I don’t have healthcare, I work two jobs, I never get holiday”.  And then say the 99% are whining.  Ok, so if you are making public all these things that happen to you, wouldn’t that be whining?

And as for the business owners, self made people, and the comfortably well off – don’t you dare bitch about me and my complaining about a system which is fundementally broken until you are working a low paid job NOW, paying bills NOW and trying to pay a mortgage NOW.  It doesn’t matter if you worked a low paid job in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or 2000s – what is relevant is now.

And this IS politics because this is what happens when we let politicians bail out dinosaurs of banks who cannot do their jobs.

I am the 99%.

Ok, first off, let’s get this out in the open – I don’t like John Bercow.  I think he’s a controlling, manipulative little 1950s throwback who loves that he is Speaker because he gets to impose his will on other people, whether they like it or not.  John Bercow will NEVER have the legacy that Betty Boothroyd left.  Your legacy will be like that of Michael Martin – not remembered by the masses.

So I was not amazed to hear that Bercow has refused to have his pension cut – like MPs by 3%.  Instead he’ll get a £40,000 a year payout.  Starting to see what I mean about being controlling and manipulative?  Also, again because of the manipulative side of Bercow, he’s refusing to contribute to his pension too.

So…we fund it, a pension which privately would cost in the region of £2 million to fund.  In the middle of a financial crisis.  Seriously Cameron?  I know he’s a Tory, and I know the Conservatives are a Boys Club, but honestly?  Don’t you understand what Occupy Wall Street is about?

If I was PM, this is what I would do – tell Bercow he has 2 options: 1) Get a pension cut of 3%.  Or 2) Contribute.  You want a £40,000 a year pension?  Well whoopie do, so do I, but I have to contribute.  And so should you.

And by the way, shame your wife isn’t interested in politics – she’d be a FAR better politician than you.  I mean, she knows how to work the media way better than you could even dream.  And that kills you doesn’t it John?

So, it’s official That First Smoke supports Occupy London.  Here is my take on the protest: What the Occupy London protesters want is for the banks to be held accountable for the mess they have got us in.  Think about it.  BP was held accountable for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  So why aren’t the banks being held accountable for the global recession?  Rather than being held accountable, we gave them MORE money!  In what world does that work?  “Your business is failing, you can’t keep up repayments, and you’re not very good at your sector.  However, we’re going to give you more money.  Not a loan, just keep it and don’t repay us.”

So here is my proposal.  Occupy London needs to be bigger.  Occupy London needs to, and I emphasise this clearly here, figuratively speaking break some eggs.  I am not suggesting riot, or civil unrest.  But creative peaceful protest.  So The Police moved the Occupy London group from The Stock Exchange to St Pauls.  Well…what is EVERYONE from St Paul’s, en mass, moved to The Stock Exchange front doors?  How are you going to control, let alone move that many people?  And as long as every protester does nothing, they cannot be arrested.  Peaceful protest is a right folks, don’t let them take this freedom from us too.

So, Occupy London protesters, I salute you.  Now go out there and be the change this country needs.  And never quit until we get it.

Says it all really doesn’t it?

Ok, so Oliver Letwin has been photographed by The Mirror dumping official documents in a bin in a park.  And apparently Letwin did it on five seperate occasions.  Now, that would be bad enough, except it also allegedly contained documents pertaining to constituents personal details and well as MoD documents, terrorism documents and other extremely sensitive stuff.

Here is the thing.  We are forever being told that personal details need to be shredded before we dispose of them, and yet here is a Cabinet Office Minister simply ripping up documents and throwing them in a bin.  In a park.  Where anyone could get them.  The best case scenario is that nothing happens – the worst case scenario is that fraudsters then get their hands on these documents and use the personal details to con Letwin’s constituents.  People he should be protecting, not putting in the firing line.

Labour MP Michael Dugher said he is going to write to the Cabinet Secretary and ask for an immediate investigation.  I agree with him.  I mean, if this is true, and it appears to be the case, Oliver Letwin should be thrown out and barred from politics.  He has put his own constituents in immediate danger by his actions.  Unacceptable.  Completely unacceptable.

The worst part is, his spokesman has said ”Oliver Letwin does some of his parliamentary and constituency correspondence in the park before going to work and sometimes disposes of copies of letters there. They are not documents of a sensitive nature,”  Ok, so he does throw away documents in the park.  One count of unacceptable behavior.  And not of a sensitive nature?  If there are private details of constituents, that is another count of unacceptable behavior.  Would you put your details in a bin in a park?  I doubt it.

So, never say I only support the Conservatives.  Ollie is a Conservative and I think he should go.  Oh, and let me just share something I don’t think anyone else is: If you want to Tweet Oliver Letwin, his Twitter account is here.  What kind of rebellious political blogger would I be not to include that?  Oh, and you can write to him here too!

And all the things I wrote about were sourced from this article.  In case Mr Letwin doesn’t like what I wrote…

Ok, so it seems that all I am writing about lately is Liam Fox.  Namely because the mass media will not let it drop.  But you know what?  Fuck it, let’s play a little payback.

So, Sky news has on it’s site (here) about how Liam Fox and Adam Werrity went to a $500 a head dinner in America.  Ooooohhhhh, that smacks of dodgy!  Errr…except it was a private function, and Liam Fox says he paid for himself, and the event was run by the sister charity of a charity run by Adam Werrity.  So, you know, kinda makes sense that Werrity was there.  And being (presumably) his best friend, it also makes sense that Liam Fox was there.  You know…to support his friend?  That thing friends do for each other?

Except that is the thing.  Professional journalists have no idea what real friendship is like, because their friends are journalists, and they think nothing of knifing their friends in the back if it makes them a buck, a promotion or just look good.  And before anyone says a damned thing – yes I do know what I am talking about, I’ve been there and done that.

But that isn’t my problem with the media.  My problem is that they jump to conclusions.  Ok, so don’t believe our politicians face value by all means, Tony Blair taught us that.  But sometimes, things get blown out of proportion, and then the media makes leaps of faith.  Like “Ah ha!  That dinner was expensive, therefore taxpayers paid for it!  Because people on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year could never, EVER, afford a £318 dinner, could they?

Ok, so at the last General Election, The Sun said they couldn’t support Labour anymore, and were now throwing their weight behind The Conservatives.  But then on the front page of The Sun today is a story about how senior Tories lied about Liam Fox being burgled just before the General Election.

Basically, Liam Fox was burgled, and had a friend over to stay.  The burglars didn’t disturb either Fox or his friend.  Fox said that he had a friend there, but then senior Tories said that he was alone.  The police said they were mystified as to how his friend wasn’t disturbed.  Well…according to his story, Liam Fox picked his friend up after some drinks.  Maybe he was too trashed and out of it to hear?  Does happen you know…

But I mean, seriously, come on Sun!  If this is how you treat parties you like, what do you do to parties you don’t like?  I mean, it hardly seems consistent.  This is the kind of dirt you should dig up on Labour, not a party you support.  I mean, maybe they’re trying to do it to give Liam Fox credibility.  Seems a bit of a cack handed way to do it, maybe a better way to do it would be to use my theory.  As in, the only plausible theory as to why Liam Fox gave his civilian friend access to the MOD and business trips.

I like The Conservative Party.  I really do.  But my God they make it hard don’t they?  David Cameron says he wants to have immigration cut from hundreds of thousands to thousands.  Really?  Come on.

The problem is not the migrants.  The problem is the type of migrants we have.  Right now I work with several migrant workers.  One Indian, two Polish.  The Indian’s English is…well…terrible.  But he admits it, and he is learning.  One of the Polish guy’s speaks pretty appalling English, but he says he doesn’t need to learn better English.  And in my opinion, should be deported back to Poland.  The other Polish guy has fantastic English, and doesn’t mind being corrected.  Actually, when I first met him, I thought he was French.  He has a very French sounding accent.  But he is a fantastic guy and we are friends on Facebook.

Now, I will declare an interest in this.  My fiancee is Honduran.  However, her English is flawless.  And in the 10 years I have been dating her, her English has been flawless.  She is obsessed by British culture and is the epitome of an Angelophile.  And you know what?  I worry she might not be allowed in next year because we are trying to blanket ban immigrants.  I just have one small argument to make in her favour.  She’s the head of digital marketing for OMD in Tegucigalpa (I think, she’s A department head in marketing).  She also has a degree.  And she is fluent in Spanish (natch, Honduras is a Latin country) and English.  What we need is people like her.  People with an education, stunning language skills, and experience in a job which she can transfer to (even at a lower level) here.

What we get are a LOT of Poles who come out with sentences like “If I have hand, I can see!”  That is an actual quote from the Pole at work with terrible English.  In contrast, my fiancee actually returned tickets for Harry Potter And The Final Frelling Movie (I have no clue what the actual title is) because she accidentally ordered tickets to the Spanish dubbed version, and she wanted the English language version.

Yup, you read that correctly.  I am going to defend Liam Fox.  Ok, so he has been a little stupid, because from what I can tell, here is the story of Dr Liam Fox and Adam Werrity (for legal reasons, this is my personal view) – Liam Fox and Adam Werrity become friends whilst Werrity is at uni, Werrity then stays at Fox’s apartment rent free for a year or so.  Things get blurry after that, but when Fox is drafted into the cabinet, he hires Werrity as his assistant.  And then all hell breaks loose with the entirely blown out of proportion MP’s Expenses “Scandal”.  And at that moment in time, Fox is paying Werrity via his expenses.  No problem there.  Except for how the public perceive things, which is that anything MPs claimed as an expense is illegal.  So Liam Fox craps himself, especially as he’s already in the brown stuff over mortgage payments claimed as expenses.  Then this year he gets asked about Werrity.  Not wanting to get in trouble, he decides to lie and say that Werrity isn’t an advisor at all.  Except, actually, he is.  But then Werrity has been to the MOD.  So why would a civilian be allowed clearance at the MOD if he’s not…you guessed it – an advisor!

And this is why I am defending Liam Fox.  Lying about Werrity (if he did) was dumb.  Should it cost him his job?  Probably not.  Will it?  Probably.  What Fox was trying to do was save face.  He didn’t want journalists digging into his expenses and announcing he was paying his advisor from his expenses (which is fine by the way) which would then cause about the same level of trouble as he’s in now.  Namely because the public don’t understand MPs expenses.

So I feel for Liam Fox.  He’s probably going to get fired for trying to save his party humiliation at publications like The Sun.  Which has resulted in his party being humiliated by publications like The Sun.  You have to feel for the guy.