'It was the banana wot done it'

A good week for lovers of schadenfreude.

First, there was the publication of the accounts of The ONE Foundation, set up by Bono (no, that’s not a dog-food, Mavis – do try to keep up!) who competes with that other foul-mouthed Irish noise-maker, Gobby Bobby, to save the world from aids, starvation, malaria, war, pestilence and Strictly Come Dancing.

It raised £9.5 million. It spent £5.1 million on salaries. It gave £118,000 to worthy causes. This is the same Bono who reduced his own tax liability by moving his business to The Netherlands.

Then there was the election of Red Ed as Leader of TIGMOO*. So farewell, then, Millipede Major. It woz the banana wot done it. Call-me-Dave must be doing handstands. An interesting feature of the last election was not the narrow results but the fact that Labour polled its second lowest number of votes since 1945. It came third in the polls in about 200 constituencies, and only got a disproportionate number of seats because of the skewed constituency boundaries that favour urban areas. These will be changed in time for the next outing if the Brokeback Coalition manages to hold on until 2015. My guess is that they will, because the LibDems are tasting the sweetness of office after nearly 90 years on short commons and they love it. Much better than getting a proper job. And the Libs have always worked on the footing that ‘if you don’t like my principles, I have others’.

An intriguing aspect is that the three party leaders are all good looking, young, personable, educated and polished. And completely interchangeable.

And dear old Laura Norder is back in the ‘comment’ pages; it is beginning to look as if the upholders of the law in Europe are going to get a good thraping. It would seem that Kittenheels the Footwear Fashionista is really going to do something about the unspeakable European Arrest Warrant. The old music hall song could have been written for the European law enforcement authorities in their application of the EAW.

We're public guardians, bold but wary,

And of ourselves, we take good care,

To risk our precious lives, we're chary,

When danger looms, we're never there.

But when we meet some helpless woman,

Or little boys that do no harm

Chorus: We run them in, We run them in, etc

This is what the Economist has to say:-

'The combination of Britain’s tough regime and careless procedures creates mess and distress. Fair Trials International, a lobby group, has a dossier of startling cases including that of Deborah Dark, a British woman who has been hounded by an EAW. She was arrested in France in 1989 on drug charges, acquitted, but later convicted in absentia (and without knowing it) after prosecutors appealed. In 2005 France issued a warrant, leading to Ms Dark being repeatedly arrested on assorted holidays and in Britain'.

And we have the case of the young British student extradited to Greece three years ago on a manslaughter charge and still awaiting trial after 13 months in prison despite there being no credible evidence against him; and the London antiques dealer accused by the Greeks of committing an offence without producing any evidence to show that, if there was an offence, it was committed in Greece.

Typically it is only the British who follow the rules. Dr Daniel Urbani, the Afro-German doctor who killed a patient with a massive overdose on his first shift, was convicted in England of manslaughter; he did a deal with the German authorities and got probation and a fine, which the Germans said nullified the EAW.

So, Ms May, here are a few principles to help you with these pesky furriners.

No extradition should be granted unless the EAW can show prima facie evidence that:

1. A crime has been committed;

2. The crime was within the jurisdiction of the government issuing the EAW;

3. The crime is a crime under English law;

4. The person named in the warrant committed the crime;

5. The crime was committed after the enactment of the EAW laws (i.e. no retrospective application of the arrest powers).

6. The crime is an imprisonable offence in the UK.

That wasn’t so difficult, was it, Theresa? For starters you would avoid scandals like the incident when an Australian academic was arrested at Heathrow in transit between the US and Australia on an EAW issued by Austria, a country he had never visited, for holocaust denial, an offence unknown within the English jurisdiction.

Of course, there is still a body of opinion which supports the EAW, ID cards and the rest of the Stasi apparatus and say ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’. Listen, your morons, it is when you have done nothing wrong that you have everything to fear. Like the retired Bristol Rotarian who spent weeks in a stinking cell in South Africa after being mistakenly arrested on a FBI warrant whilst on holiday in Durban.

Then there’s the outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease amongst the LibDems and the spectacle of them making complete assholes of themselves over ‘tax avoidance’. Latest to join the parade is Danny Alexander, the Celtic teenager who became Chief Secretary to the Treasury when his LibDem predecessor was caught up in the MPs’ expenses scandal and retired hurt after a couple of weeks. His view is that anyone who takes perfectly legal steps to pay no more tax than the state is entitled to is no better than a benefits cheat. This is the same Alexander who designated his London apartment as he second home, claiming £37,000 in expenses and then flipped it into his principal residence to avoid tax on its sale. This is the same Alexander who appointed a businessman as his ‘war on waste’ advisor who paid no tax on a dividend of £1.2 billion because it was all in the wife’s name and she lives in Monaco!

Pedants’ Corner.

These days ‘learners’ go to ‘uni’. I guess this is because they can’t spell ‘undergraduate’ or ‘university’.

*TIGMOO – This Great Movement of Ours.