The Ghurka Khukri takes aim at Gordon Brown

The Labour Government really isn't having a good time of it, the Mcbride debacle, Brown's hasty balls up of the expenses reform package and now the Ghurka's.

Yesterday the Government was defeated by a Liberal Democrat motion aimed at defeating the recent Government guidelines on which type of Ghurka had the right to settle in Britain. Under the regulations recently proposed, those Ghurka's who have retired from the British Army after 1997 are entitled to live in Britain. Those Ghurka's who retired from the British Army before 1997 are not entitled to live in Britain, thereby exclduing thousands of men who have been willing to sacrifice their lives and limbs for this country.


A High Court ruling last year decided that the regulations were unlawful and yesterday's Commons motion against the Government proves the disparity between Government thinking and the rest of the political spectrum.



Prior to yesterday's motion in the House of Commons, Phil Woolas thought that by allowing all those Ghurka's who have served Crown and Country a right of settlement in these Isles then a precedent would be established for allowing anyone who has served this country to settle here. Rather alarmist figures were qouted by the Minister of 100,000 foreign domiciled former servicemen of our Armed Forces would come over and settle here. If these figures are correct, is it really an issue?



The Government has tended to frame the debate within the usual confines of limiting immigration and reducing the burden upon tax payers. This is not an issue of finances, but one of morality. If an individual is prepared to serve this country and risk life and limb then it is only equitable that they are allowed to settle here, whether they have served the country for one year or twenty five years. Deciding how to reward bravery and commitment through the lens of dispassionate public accounting is just plain wrong.



The defeat of a Government by a Liberal Democrat motion is unheard of, particularly when a number of the Governments own MP's (twenty seven in total) sided with the opposition. Most pundits are already commenting that the authority of Gordon Brown within the Labour Party and Parliament is in terminal decline. Looking at the evidence it would be hard argue otherwise.



Sir Christopher Kelly, the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life snubbed Gordon Brown when he was asked by the Prime Minister to quickly draw up a new system of declaring parliamentary expenses, preferring instead to wait until after the summer recess before releasing plans.

The need to speed the expenses debacle through as quickly as possible and the subsequent rebuffal by Sir Christopher are emblamatic of the Prime Ministers hasty blustering attitude to counter the terminal atrophy that has now set into his political muscle. Without McBride to deliver the kicking that Brown would have ordered against Sir Christopher, there is very little that Gordon can do now. As Peter Riddle in the Times has written, there is a stench of death reminiscent of Major's last days in Government now hanging over the Brown administration.

Should the Government face defeat in its bid to push through its expenses reform bill, now looking increasingly likely thanks to the Conservatives, then it really will be the end of PM Brown.

Obama lacks pragmatism.

Following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed five years ago by the American Civil Liberties Union, Barrack Obama has decided to release a substantial number of photographs detailing 'widespread' abuse of prisoners both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The motives behind this could be said to be a deliberate cathartic cleanse of the conscience of the American military after years of stepping the boundaries of the Geneva convention and to hopefully start afresh. More likely, it is to publicly document the violations of morality, ethics and international law by elements of the US military to achieve widespreadnational and international condemnation of the crimes committed against Iraqi and Afghani prisoners during the tenure of the Bush administration. It is intended to serve as a large stick to inflict damage upon the preceding administration and the Republican image at large.

Unfortunately, it is playing pugilistic party politics at a very heavy price. Following the Abu Ghraib scandal a few years ago, the culprits wre routed out of the US military, court cases were convened and the American public were quite happy to forget an episode in their history that had left a dirty stain upon their image and standing in the global community. The release of photographs and documentary evidence during 2004 of the abuses that occured in Abu Ghraib fuelled the flames of an already brutal insurgency added to the growing toll of Iraqi civilians and allied soldiers.

As a relative sense of peace and security has now descended on Iraq, thanks largely to the surge of the US military in 2007, it is not a prudent or equitable decision to chip away at the very fragile foundations upon which a sense of security now exists.

In Afghanistan, the US, Canada and the United Kingdom have now become emroiled in a bitter insurgency in the Pashtun heartlands of Southern Afghanistan. Across the border in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashka-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are waging a bitter conflict against the Pakistani army with the overall aim of deposing the supposedly 'apostate' Government of Pakistan. Releasing photographs of abuse of Afghani prisoners in US detention will merely aggravate the violence of the Taliban insurgency US and NATO soldiers in Southern Afghanistan.

What Obama has demonstrated, is a surpising lack of gravitas and a certain naivety as to the impact this decision will create in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Far from being a carthatic renounciation of the excesses of the Bush years, the decision to release these phtographs will only embolden the anti-western venom of Sunni Jihadi Salafist Islam.

Obama deals a blow to the CIA

In a short sighted and hopefully anomalous lack of judgement, Barack Obama has decided to back track on a promise made by his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, that those who devised the policy of 'harsh interrogation' will not be prosecuted.

The culprits are Jay Bybee the former attorney general and his two assistants who in their memo's to the CIA managed to argue that torture was not actually torture, black is actually white, the sun is actually the moon and so forth.

However, Obama yesterday undermined his Chief of Staff by declaring in a briefing that such a matter is for the Attorney General to decide if those who formulated the decisions could be prosecuted. In his wisdom Obama has stated that those operatives who acted under the guidance of the attorney generals office will not be prosecuted, unfortunately life in the Washington beltway is not as ideal as that.

Case officers and interrogators will recieve subpoena's to attend hearings and criminal cases, quite possibly the legalists of those who formulated the policies of harsh interrogation will attempt to blame the FBI and the CIA for doing what they were asked to do. Inevitably, a precedent of institutional timidity will set in within the CIA and the FBI for fear of being dragged into potential prosecutions should they come across intelligence garnered from tortured/interrogated sources.

Not a very wise move from Obama who seems to have yielded to pressure from the left within his party who are determined to use the whole fiasco of harsh interrogation techniques as a means of damaging the image of the grand old party.

Ahmaninejad playing true to form

Well, it looks like Ahmadinejad played true to form yesterday at the UN with comments that inspired twenty delegates to walk out on him whilst he was ranting away. Predictably, the focus of his rant was the Israeli state that he described as a pre-text for Jewish suffering during World War Two.



It certainly isn't the worst insult that he has broad sided the Israeli's with over the years. That medal surely goes to his speech to a conference in 2005 entitled, 'The world without Zionism' in which he called for Israel to be wiped off the map.


Just because he was invited to the UN does not mean he was going to come out with something remotely resembling reason. Why even bother walking out in the first place? The American example was far more practical, they didn't bother turning up and saved themselves the cost of a motorcade.


Asking Ahmadinejad to talk at an anti-racism conference must be akin to Saddam asking Dubya to have given supporting evidence during his trial for war crimes.

One could say that his speech was in response to recent threats by the Israeli military-intelligence establishment to give Iran a bit of a drubbing with its F-15s if it does not stop its 'nuclear enrichment' programme.

Unfortunately, Ahmaninejad is fairly keen for Iran to acquire a nuclear capability in the near future to rival the Israeli's (perhaps even wipe them off the map) but also to follow the late Ayatollah Khomeini's insistence, following the Iran-Iraq ceasefire, that Iran should develop for itself a nuclear capability.


Given the President's loyalty to the edicts of the late Ayatolloh and the current progress of Iran's Uranium enrichment programme it has been estimated that Ahmaninejad will have allowed Iran to have a nuclear warhead capability early next year. That is an unnerving prospect given the stepped up Israeli rhetoric in recent weeks.

Brown won't be distracted....

"All the other diversions in politics, and some of them are difficult....this [financial crisis] is the major problem". I take it this must be our dear leaders attempt to sweep under the carpet the conundrum he and his cabal have found themselves in following the McBride affair.

The financial crisis is indeed a major problem and so to are the issues that have arisen in the wake of the e-mail scandel of last week. What has been demonstrated is the existence of an insidious culture at the heart of No. 10 that has allowed a special advisor to the Prime Minister to deem it acceptable that the boundary between the political lives of politicians and their families should be crossed by a governing political party to score cheap and nasty political points.

Gordon Brown has long been known as an introverted control freak who seeks political control through masters of spin whilst standing well away from the damage that smears often cause. This time it has managed to back fire with the muck exploding within the confines of Downing Street, rather than within the ranks of the Conservative shadow cabinet. Gordie is definately trying to give Richard Nixon a run for his money!

Lord Mandy concluded, “What they [the public] want to see is a Government that is focusing on its day job and not allowing itself to be distracted by every media squall that is sent our way.” Oh dear, oh deary me....