Sunday 24 January 2016

Frontline

Keir Mudie writes:

Security at nuclear power stations is under threat thanks to Government police cuts, Labour warns.

The Tories are axing 200 frontline staff from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary this Parliament. This amounts to a 16 per cent cut in numbers, the Sunday People reports.

Such officers guard plants like Sellafield, Dungeness, Sizewell B and Hartlepool.

The news comes after Shadow Energy Minister Clive Lewis asked a question to the Department of Energy earlier this month.

Clive Lewis said: “The Chancellor promised he would protect the police but now we know they need to be protected from his cuts.

“Hundreds of the front line officers who protect sensitive nuclear power stations and radioactive materials are facing the axe, even though these are top terrorist targets.”

Last year, George Osborne told the House of Commons: “I am announcing there will be no cuts to the police budget at all.

“There will be real terms protection for police funding. The police protect us and we’re going to protect the police.”

I like Clive Lewis. He is the Good Dan Jarvis, with Dan Jarvis as the Bad Clive Lewis.

Lewis did not become politically active for the first time in his life on being given a safe seat at a by-election, and thus by fiat the National Executive Committee, at the age of 38 (still a mere five years ago), having been until that moment a Commissioned Officer close to the very top of the military Establishment and to its highly lucrative second careers in the arms trade.

The BBC's campaign for Jarvis is even more egregious and pernicious than its campaign for Jess Phillips, who entered Parliament a mere eight months ago and who is in any case only 34.

Jarvis's record is held up as, in itself, a qualification to become Prime Minister, and then presumably to remain so for life, or at least until handing over to Phillips.

But nothing in that record is in itself a qualification for any political office whatever. It is not a disqualification, either. But what is this, Burma? Egypt? Pinochet's Chile?

If a history of military service is to be anything to do with politics, then it can only be so as part of the background to a rather more extensive history of political activity, as well as to a pronounced aversion to the sending of other people into harm's way.

As in the case of Clive Lewis.

3 comments:

  1. The NEC should refuse to ratify the reselection of Jarvis or Phillips, campaigning for Leader when there is no vacancy is totally beyond the pale.

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  2. Can't believe Argentina is now openly revealing Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-British traitor, detailing his promises to hand them our territory, and even going so far as to call him "one of ours."

    ""Argentina’s outgoing ambassador to London, Alicia Castro, said the Labour leader “shares our concerns” and “he is one of ours”.

    In an interview published on the Argentinian embassy’s website, Castro said Corbyn had visited the Argentinian embassy in London and was “friendly and humorous”.

    How delightful.

    It's good to know what side he's on.

    Mr Corbyn certainly isn't "one of ours."

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/24/jeremy-corbyn-power-sharing-deal-falkland-islands-argentina

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    Replies
    1. You might as well have said that about Margaret Thatcher, who wanted a leaseback and who had absolutely no intention of asking the Islanders about it.

      You might as well say it about the entire Foreign Office to this day.

      The complete failure of the Tories to make any headway with this story speaks for itself. They thought that it would be huge, and it just isn't.

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