Gurkhagate could topple Brown

By Alan Tyers

Yesterday’s House of Commons vote in favour of Gurkhas’ rights to live in the UK was not only a victory for the courageous men who risked their lives for our freedoms – it was a victory for good sense that showed British democracy at its best.

It was also a potentially mortal blow to Gordon Brown’s authority.

The principle brilliantly articulated by Lib Dem leader and unexpected hero of the hour Nick Clegg - that someone willing to die for this country should not be denied the right to live in this country - was so glaringly, simply, unavoidably right that the Prime Minister’s effort of will in refusing to see it was almost something to marvel at.

Yet the true political marvel of the Gurkha affair was not how the Government averted its gaze from such a clear principle, but how it failed to see defeat looming when the consensus was wide enough to witness the spectacle of a group of immigrants receiving the support of the BNP.

All that would be damaging enough, but it wasn’t just that Brown’s MPs didn’t swallow his justifications: they no longer believed his figures. And after 50p tax and Smeargate, there’s talk that a hammering in May’s local elections could spell the end for Brown.

But as the self-sacrifice of a proud and courageous group was finally rewarded, yesterday’s vote wasn’t about defeat but victory – for Gurkha dignity, and British decency too.

Caption competition: Boris and Priscilla

by Simon Glover

We asked what was being said as London Mayor Boris Johnson met cast members from Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical to launch a new initiative to promote the West End?

Winner

Boris couldnt help thinking that The Cheeky Girls had really let themselves go recently.
Shelly D, North Yorks

Runners-up

Gosh, I wish I'd known about the dress code, I've just the frock for this at home!
Liz Morgan, Rhondda Cynon Taff

I'm not sure this uniform will be better for policing the next summit
Geraint Griffiths, Bromsgrove

And I thought my hair was bad!
Dean, Plymouth

See all the previous winners

Young knives

By Alan Tyers

Security measures might keep the weapons out, but what about the violent kids?

The news that a London borough has installed “knife arches” at its secondary schools is… good, I guess.

The boys and girls of Waltham Forest can now attend school with slightly less threat of being stabbed; and a school inspector says 12,000 pupils have been searched with no weapons found so far. These are the sorts of small victories we must now celebrate.

But given the fact that the one set of security arches will be moved from school to school at random, the chances of catching anyone with a knife are fairly slim. Each of the borough’s 22 schools will have the arches for one day a term, so the knife-carrying kids could be forgiven for thinking that these are reasonable odds against detection.

Furthermore, most of the stabbings are taking place not inside school, but outside it.

The cost to the taxpayer of erecting the airport-style security is worth it, of course, if it saves a life. The state is doing its bit: but what are the parents of these children doing for their part?

It has now got to the point where certain parts of the school system have little educational ambition and are existing just to act as a sort of day-centre for troublesome youths. Massively disruptive kids are allowed back into school again and again after violent behaviour: maybe the focus should be on keeping them out, armed or not.

Then those children who aren’t carrying knives and might want to learn something can actually do so.

Potentially speaking

by Alan Tyers

Should we be panicking? Nobody seems quite sure. But the papers are doing their best…

Pity the poor couple on the front page of The Sun today: newlyweds, no less, which always makes being sick so much worse in the world of the newspaper. Nice for the couple that we can all share in their illness.

But after the big shock horror headline – and The Sun is by no means alone in this sort of news bait-and-switch – what do readers actually discover? The disease is “potentially deadly”… There are more “suspected cases in the UK”…  The “deadly virus could infect up to 40 per cent of the UK population”.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda… Later in the story, it turns out that the couple who have the “potentially deadly” disease are, in fact, “recovering well”. Oh right. So not so much “potentially deadly” in their case. Or “deadly”. Just “not deadly”.

Over at the supersoaraway Guardian, you can follow the progress of swine flu via a live newsfeed. The first entry at time of writing was: “Stephen Fry has called for calm about swine flu on Twitter.”

Thank God. Stephen is alright and still able to Twitter. Even in these terrifying days of falling newspaper circulations – sorry, “deadly diseases” – life must go on, eh?

Don’t make racketeers of our police

by Greg McDonald

Jack Straw’s proposal to tack an arbitrary £15 victims’ surcharge onto already extortionate on-the-spot fines for motorists is daylight robbery.

Britain’s rash of fixed-penalty fines may have proved a tremendous cash cow, with more than three million drivers fined for speeding last year, but, as lucrative as fixed penalties are, much of the huge revenue currently generated by fining motorists is frankly criminal.

While drivers who place others in danger deserve to be punished, an on-the-spot fine of £60 – about an average day’s pay – for a victimless crime like driving without a seat belt forces police officers who joined the force to fight crime to act as common racketeers.

And if motorists think the safest thing to do is pull over, think again. These days it’s easier to drop a batch of guns into Baghdad than to stop the car in a London borough, where wardens pounce like wildcats on hapless delivery drivers who can do nothing but rage impotently that the alternative to parking on the curb for two harmless minutes was to lug 200 boxes of Monster Munch on foot.

Not even Jeremy Clarkson would argue against proper compensation for victims of crime. But in an arena in which arbitrary fines already breed contempt for the law, far from ensuring those responsible for crimes pay the appropriate price, Straw’s proposals present the obscene prospect of rape victims' compensation packages being met by conscientious citizens who simply failed to put their seat belts on.

Good Week: Cheryl Cole, Jacob Zuma, Susan Boyle, Roy Keane

by Greg McDonald

It was a hot week for Girls Aloud siren Cheryl Cole as 10 million FHM readers voted her the World's Sexiest Woman 2009, beating off stiff competition from Megan Fox, Jessica Alba and Britney Spears. Of course, anyone who recalls Cheryl's talent-show beginnings will know it was really always all about her singing.

It was a triumphant week for South Africa's new president Jacob Zuma as, following his endorsement by Nelson Mandela, the ruling ANC looked on course to win 60% of the vote in the country's elections. A controversial figure cleared of rape but still being investigated for corruption, here's Zuma's campaign song ‘Umshini Wami’ (translation: "Bring me my Machine Gun").

It was a great week for Susan Boyle, as the soprano Cinderella began her makeover with a new Primark jacket. Oh, and 100 million YouTube hits for an old 1999 recording of ‘Cry Me a River’. The fairytale princess was obviously keeping one silver slipper on the ground as she accepted the offer of dinner from toad prince Piers Morgan.

It was a good week for Roy Keane, as the former Manchester United midfielder took up the managerial challenge at Ipswich Town. The Tractor Boys job is the first furrow the Irishman has ploughed since leaving Sunderland, and Keane immediately set his sights on giving the club’s eight-year stint outside the Premier League the red card.

Bad Week: Alistair Darling, Sir Paul McCartney, Japanese pop star, Bruce Grobbelaar

by Greg McDonald

It was a dour week for Chancellor Alistair Darling as the Treasury’s first gentle foray into the YouTube age could do little to soften a grim 2009 Budget. Darling set out a squeeze that will still leave the national finances unbalanced until 2018 – only to be slammed by the IMF for being overly optimistic!

It was a poor week for Sir Paul McCartney, as the Sunday Times Rich List revealed rich rock stars like Macca and Sir Elton John had lost up to a quarter of their wealth in the recession. For Paul, who's recently re-learnt the lesson that money can't buy you love, it looks like the good times are over as he’s now worth only a paltry £300m.

It was a week of naked controversy in Japan where clean-cut pop star Tsuyoshi Kusanagi of boy band SMAP was arrested for indecency in public park after being found shrieking drunkenly in his birthday suit. "What's wrong with being naked?" the ‘Lion Heart’ star reportedly asked officers. And he sort of has a point really, doesn't he?

Finally, it was the week ex-Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar could no longer stand the heat, as he quit cooking reality show Hell's Kitchen to be with his wife after a "trying" seven days. Things weren't much sweeter for current keeper Pepe Reina as Arsenal's Andre Arshavin hit the Liverpool net four times to effectively end the Reds' title hopes.

Do condoms belong next to crisps?

by Greg McDonald

Religious commentators who claim new TV adverts for the morning after pill offer a green light for teenage promiscuity, and that contraception shouldn’t be advertised “alongside a packet of crisps”, can’t see the wood for the rubber trees.

Our national problem is not consenting adults sharing a healthy human experience – it’s our unwanted pregnancy rate. And if TV ads are effective in lowering that rate, then more power to them.

Yet social conservatives like Catholic Bishop Vincent Nicholls and Ann Widdecombe continue to put the many-wheeled cart of sex education before the virile stallion of sex.

Widdecombe claims young people seeing morning after pill ads “will think there are no consequences to having sex”, while the Bishop opposes TV condom advertising too. Such ads fail to show our youngsters “what human sexuality is about”, claims the lifelong celibate in the dress.

Today’s kids don’t live in Narnia, but a world where the school run is past the local pole-dancing lair and boob-job ads fund the railways. If anything is going to send these sex-saturated teens into a pagan orgy of promiscuity, it’s not a timely reminder of the availability of contraceptives.

“Alongside a packet of crisps” is exactly where contraception should be advertised – as a responsible part of a healthy life free of superstitious guilt and social taboos.

Caption competition: Darling and Brown

by Simon Glover

We asked what was said as Alistair Darling exchanged words with Gordon Brown after the Chancellor's budget speech in the House of Commons?

Winner

Gordon, I'm going to tax EVERYBODY with matching hair and eyebrows, so there..
Clayton Ayers

Runners-up

And stop calling me Darling
Rob Falconer

Right, that's the taxpayers screwed. Now, how about that pint before the prices go up?
Eddie McGrory, Glasgow

Do you think we got away with it?
Geraint Griffiths, Bromsgrove

See all the previous winners

Soak the rich? They barely got their feet wet

by Tom Kilkenny

In the run-up to Alistair Darling’s speech today, there was a lot of chatter about a “soak-the-rich” Budget. We were told the Chancellor was under Cabinet pressure to make those on higher incomes pick up the bill for the Government’s tooth-loosening fiscal deficit.

And, lo and behold, the biggest headline to emerge from the 50-minute speech was the introduction of 50% income tax for the lucky few among us who trouser more than £150,000 a year.

Combine that with the removal of personal allowances for people earning more than £100,000, and it looks like the cash is going to come rolling in, doesn’t it?

Maybe not so much. Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, has chewed the end of her pencil and worked out that ditching the allowances will only earn the Treasury £180m by 2011/12. Similarly, restrictions on tax relief for high earners’ pension contributions will contribute only £200m a year.

The move might have more serious consequences once the impending election starts to exert its pull. Will the breach of Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase income tax during this parliament come back to haunt Gordon Brown’s administration? Remember George Bush and the “read my lips, no more taxes” pledge that contributed to his defeat in 1992?

As much as an attempt to balance the books, this is a pre-election move to lure the Conservatives into the swampy mire of a fight on tax. David Cameron refused to take the bait this time round, but will he be able to resist once he’s got a few well-scripted retorts pencilled on his cuff?