Now Tony wants us all doorstepped

Was Tony Blair an avid stamp collector in his spotty school-days? Perhaps he still is. I can just imagine him taking down his Stanley Gibbons album and gloating over his collection of Tristan da Cunha triangulars and Solomon Islands horizontals after a hard day's prime ministering.

Or perhaps he prefers train-spotting or collecting car numbers as his relaxation these days and has bequeathed the stamp album to Gordon Brown.

Whichever, Tone displays all the symptoms of the compulsive collector. He is obsessional about targets, goals, lists of things to do. Tell Tony about a failing sink school in your catchment area and he will fob it off on his Education Secretary. Show him that it has moved two notches on the league table and he will make a speech about it.

The latest Blair collecting fad is the national DNA database. Notwithstanding that we already have the largest such database in the world, our diligent p.m. wants it expanded to include the details of everyone in the country. Yes, sir and madam, you too.

He has not, naturally, chosen to bother Parliament with this ambition. Nevertheless, should his Parliamentary colleagues find themselves in a forgiving mood by the time he finally decides to wave his last goodbye, in the event that by then he has his all-encompassing national DNA register up and running, I have an idea for the perfect leaving present.

It would be, in saveral calf-bound volumes, the complete Blair National Database Print-Out. Hours of absorbing reading. It would be Tony Blair's Magna Carta.

As to why he would want such a collection cluttering up his bookshelves (and remember, you never hear the Blairs saying, 'Oh you shouldn't have!'), Tone has his own answer. It is that he has public backing because his database is 'helping us track down murderers and rapists'. And, no doubt, people who deny access to their homes to a new breed of council tax inspectors.

For the full version of Tony's case for this 21st century Big Brotherism, see his sundry remarks on the need fo compulsory ID cards. It is, dressed up a little, the old 'if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' argument.

What Blair seems incapable of understanding is that what we have to hide, and what we fear losing, is our privacy. Just as we wouldn't dream of asking someone encountered on the bus or in the pub how much he earns or how often he has sex, so we expect our own privacy to be respected - even in these ever more intrusive times.

Tony just doesn't get it. Privacy? What's privacy when the national interest (anything from tax evasion to terrorism) is at stake?

Yet he values his own family's privacy. Every year, courtesy of this or that millionaire, the Blairs seek holiday refuge in some secluded spot. Except perhaps for a single photo session, they are then, by tacit agreement, left alone until they come back home.

But supposing, for reasons of their own or 'in the national interest', the Press decided to give the Blairs the full treatment, dogging their every footstep and hanging around outside their front door in round-the-clock shifts - a routine known in the trade as doorsteppig.

Tone would be rightly aggrieved. In fact, he would be incandescent. Yet on a daily basis, Tony Blair is doorstepping the nation, demanding 'the right to know' as his passport into our privacy.

The green light for council tax inspectors to tramp through our bedrooms with the threat of a one thousand pound fine and 200 a day thereafter is only the latest exercise in doorstepping. Next comes the all-encompassing DNA register.

And to what purpose? From the 3.6 million DNA profiles currently on file - every arrest is like to go on the records, guilty or not - there have been so far 21 convictions, at a cost of goodness knows how much police time.

Is it worth it? I will say nothing about possible human error, particularly where the Home Office is concerned. As long as Tony Blair is happy, that's the main thing. And pretty soon he will have us all doorstepped.

I mentioned just now the penalty of 1,000 pounds for householders who refuse to cooperate with the council tax prodnoses.

Pretty stiff, it seemed to me. But then it occurred to me that it is a long time since I last heard of a fine that didn't start at 1,000 pounds, going up in some cases to 5,000 or even more.

What happened? I've heard of inflation, but this is pre-Hitler Germany we are talking about.

When I was growing up, the neighbourhood fair bristled with notice boards threatening fines for this and that transgression. Top rate was a pound. The fine for cycling without lights was ten bob. For ball-playing in a no-ball zone, half a crown.

You could commit a dozen offences and still see change out of a fiver. Today, it would cost your life savings.

Keith Waterhouse (Daily Mail)

The Secret Blair Tapes
by Richard Littlejohn

Sept 20 06
Hungary is in turmoil after a leaked tape was broadcast in which the PM, Ferenc Gyurcsany, admitted his socialist government lied 'morning, evening and night' to win re-election. 'It was perfectly clear that what we were saying was untrue and in the meantime we did absolutely nothing for the past four years,' he confessed. >>>The Daily Mail has received this extraordinary, unexpurged recording of a candid meeting between Tony Blair and his Cabinet colleagues....

Hey, guys. Have you seen the riots in Hungary on the news? All because the PM decided to tell the truth for once. What got into him?

I mean, everyone knows we've been lying for years, but that's no reason to admit it. How I've got away with the 'pretty straight kind of guy' act for so long is a mystery. The first time I wheeled it out, over Formula One fiasco, John Humphreys and I kept getting a fit of the giggles. We had to do three takes.

Remember '24 hours to save the NHS?' That was a laugh. We've spent billlions and the health service is still a complete shambles.

Don't interupt, Patricia. We all know your statistics are a work of fiction. We're having to bale out hospitals on marginals just to keep them open. Patients are dying like flies from MRSA. You stand more chance of getting out of Basra alive.

And That't another thing. Can you believe everyone fell for that WMD rubbish? Alastair cobbled it together off the internet. As for the idea that we were all going to be attacked in 45 minutes, I ask you. I don't know how I kept a straight face.

Dubya decided to attack Iraq long before 911, just to get even for his dad. First time I met him, he took me to one side and said: Yo Blair! We're going into Iraq to kick ass. I'm expecting you to step up to the plate because we can't rely on those cheese-eating surrender monkeys....What could I do? I couldn't risk missing out on the book deal and the American lecture circuit. Cherie would have killed me.

I don't have to tell you guys how much we need the money. Connaught Square, don't even go there. And those flats in Bristol. Why did I ever agree to that? Anyone could see that Peter Foster coming a mile off, but you know Cherie when she gets an idea in her head.

Have you seen the price of everything these days? I don't know how the hell we get away with pretending that inflation is at an all-time low.

Even though we wangled the kids into selective schools, it still costs a fortune putting them through college. When I said 'education, education, education' was my priority, I only meant Euan's education, Nicky's education and Kathryn's education. We didn't even have the other one in '97.

Then there was the MMR jab business. Of course it's not safe, but I could hardly say that, could I?

I don't know what you're laughing about, Tessa. Only a half-wit would swallow the line about you not knowing anything about your seven mortgages or your husband's links with the Mafia. Now daft do you think people are? You'll be telling me next that Dr Kelly really did commit suicide.

What is it with us and mortgages? Look at the mess Peter got himself into, just because he couldn't bring himself to tell the truth to his building society. Or his permanent secretary. Or me, for that matter. Still, he lies about everything else, so no change there.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. That was a belter. It's like the Wild West out there. The police are useless and thanks to Cherie's beloved Human Rights Act - which I only brought in so she could make a few bob out of it - the courts can't do anything about terrorists.

Mind you, we've got to find them first. We haven't got the faintest idea who's living here. Managed immigration? Don't make me laugh. For all I know, Osama Bin Laden could be holed up in Bradford, claiming benefits.

And no, John, please don't tell me that we are tightening up the borders, because you know it isn't true. The Press might fall for it, but you're talking to me now. For a start, Cherie and her friends in the legal profession wouldn't let us.

We can't even be bothered to prosecute those nutters running around the streets of London calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be beheaded. What's the point? There's no room in the prisons, anyway.

Mind you, the way things are going, if there are any cells vacant I'll end up sharing one with Lord Levy for the next five years. We knew perfectly well what we were doing knocking out honours for loans. No one expected them to be paid back.

While we're telling the truth about the Home Office, why do we maintain the fiction that ID cards are the solution to everything? We all know the technology doesn't work properly.

About the only things which do work are all those speed cameras, which we keep saying are there to save lives but everyone knows are just there to raise money.

And so much for our integrated transport system. Still, it's probably my fault for putting Two Jags (John Prescott? - famous Commie - not by Lazyboy) in charge of it all those years. I knew perfectly well he'd spend his life gallivanting around the world, scuba diving, taking helicopter rides and chasing skirt like Warren Beatty on Viagra.

The man can barely read and write, for heaven's sake. What was I thinking of when I made him Deputy PM? I must have been on drugs.

And speaking of drugs, who though it was a good idea to legalise cannabis while at the same time banning smoking? Probably the same idiot who thought the measured response to the foot-and-mouth scare was to set fire to every cow and sheep in the country.

Don't even mention the bloody Dome. We should have strangled that at birth instead of falling for that phoney Cool Brittania guff.

Thank goodness I didn't get away with signing us up to the Euro.

What is it, Gordon? Don't give me prudence. We've doubled public spending and all we've got to show for it is another few hundred thousand civil servants sitting around on their backsides doing the Sudoki in the Guardian and a government deficit bigger than Elton John's florist's bill. No wonder taxes have gone through the roof.

And what's the use in importing all these people from Eastern Europe when we've got about five million unemployed of our own, whatever the figures say?

Frankly, the past nine and a half years have been a complete and utter waste of time, a squandered opportunity. What's my legacy? British troops bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan? The M4 bus lane?

No. I shall jsut have to stay on until I achieve something - anything.

Calm down, Gordon. When I said I was standing down next year, you didn't actully believe me, did you? What can I say?

I lied.


Caveat: The contents above do not in any way reflect my policies. Just for a laugh I thought I would put it up. There is a mention of speed cameras and id cards. I think speed cameras are actually Big Brotherish too.