Snubby Brown

Oh dear. Gordy's been clamouring to get a a chat with Barack, about stuff, and got 15 minutes in the kitchen, on a 'walk and talk'. But Downing Street officials failed in their frantic attempts to get 'face time' with the US President.

Perhaps the stink of Lockerbie and the 'compassionate' release of the convicted Libyan terrorist has something to do with it.

Or perhaps its because Obama doesn't want to be associated with the weakest excuse for a UK cling-on PM in the last 100 years thats about to oversee the downfall of the current labour government. And boring too.

The picture says it all

Middle class familioes to pay more for students

In a move of incredible blind stupidity, and groping to claw back mobey from the banking fiasco, the CBI's higher education task force has come up with a plan to make the middle class pay more, yet again,

Essentially :

• The £3,100-a-year cap on fees should be lifted, suggesting that a rise to £5,000-a-year would deliver £1.25 billion more for universities;
• Student loans, which are subsidised by the Government at present, should be charged at commercial interest rates – significantly increasing the amount graduates will repay;
• The threshold for grants should be lowered. At the moment, students from families earning less than £60,000 are eligible for a partial grant, but the CBI says that this should be lowered to £38,000. Only students from families earning less than £17,910 should receive a full grant – instead of the present £25,000.

The latter would hit middle class families the hardest.

The utterly ridiculous goal of getting 50% of school leavers in universities (most of which are mickey mouse nedia studies courses), will leave the universities filled with children of rich people (ie politicians), and the children of single parent, ethnic minority, lesbian and gay parents.

The rest of us (the silent majority) will still struggle to send our children to universities, where they will be saddled with £30,000 of debt on graduation, in the hope that they will be able to make a decent living and contribute to the coffers of the country.

Frankly, whats the point. This countries higher education system is going down the pan, no matter what any think tank comes up with. The only reason for the crackpot 50% goal was to reduce the number of school leavers hitting the streets, and reduce the unemployment statistics. Oh yes, this recession has been building for a lot longer than anyone thinks!

Gordon Brown - action man!

It's getting close to election time. We know because strange things are happening.

Gordy (et al) sent in special forces to get out a kidnapped journalist Stephen Farrell, and it was made damn sure that we all knew about it.

Never mind the fact that 2 people died ( a spec ops, and a translator), but our boys got him out.

As far as I know this doesn't usually happen like this. Normal there's days or weeks of intense hostage negotiations to try and resolve the situation before armed intervention is required.

But that doesn't really make the news does it?

Prisoner compassion

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi released by a snivelling Kenny McAskill, on 'comapassionate' grounds, with no 'compunction' from any sources other than 'compassion' for a dying man.

Like no one else dies in prison, or everyone who's about too gets released? The Scottish government's been suspiciously quiet about how many other 'compassionate' releases there have been.

And of course there's been no 'under the counter' oil deals with Libya. Our government would never do that, would they? Apart from all the leaks that have been appearing about whos said what to who when (honestly, theres so much stuff, I can barely be bothered to list it).

I know this is a little late, but whats compelled me to write this is the decision by the justice secretary Jack Straw to pardon Michael Shields.

Michael was convicted, rightly or wrongly, in Bulgaria for manslaughter in 2005, and was allowed back to prison in the UK on compassionate grounds, with the expectation by the Bulgarian government that he would serve his time here.

It seems like more than happy coincidence to me that this happened so soon after Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was returned to Libya. One could see this as a cynical ploy by our gov to gain popularity, or to show that compassion is paramount in our justice system.

But I just can't get it out of my head that this is a diversion from Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi's release, to show that the reaction that the Libyan people gave was very similar to that shown by Michael's supporters, and that the Libyan people's reaction was in actual fact not so bad, and only to be expected, and fair enough, and we can show compassion to our people too, no matter how much it may annoy the Bulgarian government.