STONE COLD HAVEN

Loss leading is as old as the concept of marketing itself. Whether it’s the freebies provided to promote a new lager at the local bar, or the free samples of cosmetics and fragrances dished out at beauty stores, or the good old fashioned buy one get one free – inducement to invite custom are part and parcel of our business world.

It’s unsurprising then, to find a storm brewing between groups of commercial sex workers in Copenhagen and the Mayor’s office who are determined that none of the working girls are going to have an early Christmas. What with the whole world descending on Copenhagen, it’s naive at best to assume that horizontal refreshments aren’t part and parcel of the ’entertainment package’ available to delegates at the climate and environment conference just beginning in the Danish capital. Just because it’s not on the official programme doesn’t mean that it’s not available.

So when the Copenhagen Mayor’s office issues a formal communiqué that blatantly says ”Be Sustainable, Don’t Buy Sex” and distributes it to hotels, the response from representative groups of the working girls is emphatic.

Conference delegates who show the official “Anti-prostitution postcards” being distributed at the conference and in hotels, in conjunction with their official conference delegates ID cards – are being offered free sexual services as a retaliatory measure against the move by the Mayor’s office.

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A quick scan through history provides a fascinating insight into the downfall of some of yesteryear’s (well – centuries really) global powers and their gradual and sometimes dramatic fall from grace.

Take for example, the Order of the Knights Templar – arguably the world’s first multi-national corporation who were pretty much responsible for inventing the banking system. They may have had their day between the 12th and 14th centuries – but during their time, they wielded unprecedented power through their economic resources that would rival the combined economic power of the so called G8. Of course they had their very own militia to boot, who operated with the ruthlessness of any fighting force known to man – but we’re not going to suggest that these “soldiers of the temple” were a bunch of thugs sanctioned by the Catholic church now, are we?

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It’s always difficult to tell which is the more stressful or humiliating – the fact that your hubby has been watching dirty old hard core porn, and probably playing with his tojjer, while you’re away working hard for the bacon, or the fact that the drama of him being a naughty boy is played out on a national and possibly international stage.

I must admit, I’m not a fan of Jacqui Smith, the UK Home Secretary, but even a stone cold approach to some issues in life doesn’t stop me from empathizing with her, regardless of the spectacular stupidity of this matter. Deep down she must be wondering what the fuck hit her as she looks in the mirror and tries to contemplate whether to castrate her husband for the public humiliation, or whether to cry because of the heartbreak.

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Trick question: What do Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Ceausescu, Gordon Brown, George Bush, Robert Mugabe and who else….Hmmm let me see…the military junta in Burma, the military junta who ruled Argentina in the 70s and Pol Pot have in common.

Answer: For differing reasons, they have all been responsible for some of the world’s biggest and most severe violations of civil liberties of the poor old folks that they proclaim to lead or have led.

George Orwell (if he could), must have a smug and uncanny smile on his face that has that characteristic “I told you bastards so” look. Look at any plot in his 1984 master piece and you get this queasy feeling that George was definitely onto something that will scare the living daylights out of any self respecting individual who values their privacy.

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There are fewer things in the world more cynical than a bunch of…let’s say, pin stripe suited men sitting in a board room (without any women present of course –,well, tell a lie, except for Mildred in the corner taking minutes or Deidra the tea lady who pops in once in a while to top up the biscuits and make sure the tea pot is fresh) discussing solutions about how to fight gender discrimination in the work place.

Or maybe, a conference about “The Kenya we want” that is fronted by the old school establishment of unsavoury, incompetent and outright dodgy characters who have had over 40 years to provide the Kenya folks needed in the first place but failed spectacularly. (Speaking of which – what was the point in holding a conference when the answer to the question of “What Kenyans want?” is succinctly captured in breathtaking precision in the Kenyan national anthem).

Anyway, it was interesting to note that once again, there was a “high profile” (this word is as abused as the word normal coz’ clearly, it’s a relative state of affairs) conference bringing together the good and the great who classify themselves as world experts on poverty alleviation and eradication.

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It’s no secret that conventional warfare goes hand in hand with propaganda war – and managing the flow of information is as critical as the battles on the field themselves.

However, when it gets to the stage of threatening someone with 14 years in prison as a guest of Her Majesty Aunt Liz, for the crime of providing accurate and necessary information that needs to be out in the open, then the old adage of truth and freedom becomes as cynical as the concept of an honest politician. Granted, the chap in question is an officer of some decorative rank in the British army, but his interpretation of the often touted “Official Secrets Act” deserves another medal on his breast plate, if not a pat on the back.

Clearly, we’ve all known that NATO and allied forces in Afghanistan have been feeding us bullshit about the numbers of civilian casualties, in Bush’s disastrous so called ‘War on terror’. In their (the military and politicians) misguided enthusiasm to test the understanding of the public’s intelligence, they often want us to believe that their superior military precision and advance weaponry and rockets can manoeuvre corners, navigate traffic lights, pass through open windows, and knock on an enemy’s door before exploding just when the enemy opens the door – therefore keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.

Lt. Colonel Owen McNally clearly had a morality attack (or maybe he was just getting some on the side and gave in to pillow talk – who knows…) – it gets to a point where the motivation for unleashing the info becomes an irrelevance. He has been arrested by the British authorities for revealing very ‘sensitive’ information to a female human rights campaigner he befriended in Afghanistan, alluding to the true numbers of civilian casualties in the Afghanistan war.

The public have clearly been lied to about the true numbers of civilians dying. Pray tell why we want to throw the book and entire legal cabinet at someone who feels that keeping this info from the public is wrong. Slapping the official secrets act as a blanket all clauses gagging order for someone who is telling the truth about the true cost of this war is more repugnant than the tactics of the so called bad guys that they’re chasing out there.

Read McNally’s story here
Apparently, American generals are also pissed off like a nonsense. Funny, they have enough trouble minimizing the Dover effect by keeping the numbers of military body bags arriving back in the states away from the glare of the public…without some British loose cannon on deck unleashing true numbers of civilian casualties.

Equal opportunity and ‘elf and safety mafioso masqeurading as administrators complain a lot about being maligned for being anal about political correctness and about enforcing the straight and narrow.

Once in a while you get a classic example of the madness of political correctness unleashed on unsuspecting souls. Take Caroline Petrie for example, a devout Christian and community nurse going on about her business, with an added optional extra of an offer to pray for the patient Kind of like – would you like a biscuit with that tea, or can I take your coat for you, or do you want me to open the door for you type of optional extra….or maybe not…

Read Caroline’s story here. She is at risk of losing her job and even getting struck off the nursing register for offering to pray for a 79 year old patient. Maybe one of the mafioso saw a funny side to this if it turned out that Caroline was offering elder patients their last prayer before death came calling, whilst all the while fronting as a community nurse.

I personally think the mafioso administrators were just bored and running out of ideas to justify their salaries.

Their mandate in economic rape and pillaging is rubber stamped by the aptly called Parliamentary Service Committee (well – it’s because the only thing they serve is an insalubrious and dodgy parliament). This so called committee is chaired by the Speaker of the Kenyan Parliament, Kenneth Marende, and the VP – Kalonzo Musyoka, as well as the two deputy Prime Ministers, Uhuru Kenyatta and Musalia Mudavadi are fully paid, card carrying members of the “let’s rape Kenya” cabal.

Kenyans most seasoned bandits who regularly masquerade as members of parliament are perhaps most infamous for two outstanding acts of impunity:

1. They’re the highest paid legislators in the world, despite Kenya being one of the poorest countries in the world and having a human development index ranking of 148 out of 177.
2. They have illustrated the highest and most insulting level of impunity by not only refusing to pay taxes on allowances, they’ve actually legislated against paying these taxes.

The most basic thing you learn about leadership, is the importance of exemplifying in your every day actions, the values and virtues you purport to stand for or represent. Forget the fact that tax evasion or tax avoidance can be argued to be a criminal offence, the actions of Kenyan legislators defy belief in illustrating how totally out of this planet and out of touch with reality these low life punks are. Kenyans are experiencing possibly the worst economic hardships that our generation has seen, with massive unemployment, a looming famine affecting over 10 million people, a truck load of social and development challenges, and I don’t know what else, and these so called members of the August house shamelessly rape the country with their impunity in self preservation.

I’d like to illustrate this point with some figures (credited to some good research by the Nairobi Star

• Including salary, benefits and allowances, the monthly (Yes – monthly) take home pay for a Kenyan member of parliament is Kshs. 1,435,846 (US$ 17,970 per month). Considering this is mostly tax free, it equates to a monthly gross income of over Kshs. 2,000,000 (US$ 25,031 gross per month)
• The single biggest expenditure per MP is a personal allowance equating to an average of Kshs. 700,000 per month (US$ 8,760 per month). The personal allowance caters for (among other things) house allowance, responsibility allowance (now this one is just a classic, being paid to be responsible), entertainment allowance (Kshs. 67,000 – can you believe this?), transport (not even car allowance, just transport), extraneous allowances (this I’d like to find out more, domestic servants allowances, attendance, constituency and car maintenance allowances.
• In addition to the car maintenance allowance and the transport allowance, each MP gets a mileage claim allowance, which added together, gives you a grand total of an allowance of Kshs. 629,000) per month (US$ 7,872) to run a vehicle.
• Each MP has also received a grant of Kshs. 3,300,000 (US$ 41,301) to buy a car, and by the way, the import duty on these so called official cars are paid for them.
• MPs and their entire families are insured for personal and health insurance equating to Kshs. 51,000 per year per MP.
• Parliament also has a capital grant fund of Kshs. 400 million (US$$ 5,006,257) to the mortgage fund capital to assist MPs to buy houses (which begs the question – where were these punks living before?”

We haven’t even considered the expenses for running constituency offices. I’m getting a migraine just thinking of it.

You know what’s sad is that there are people walking the streets looking for every available opportunity, however small, to put food on the table for their families. On a good day, they’ll get one meal, and many others go without something to eat, and not because of lack of trying. You don’t even have to struggle to count those who’ve resorted to commercial sex work as the only alternative to feed their own, or to supplement what meagre resources they have.

…and these bandits shamelessly call themselves leaders of Kenya.