Ha ha ha ha ha

Don't You Know Who I Am?, or Rules Are For The Little People (via BoingBoing and the Daily Mirror. This is why Tories are Scum.

Baroness Neville-Jones, the UK government's security chief, was stopped at Heathrow with an oversize aerosol can in her hand-baggage. When security officials upbraided her for trying to bring banned objects onto a plane, she reportedly railed at them:

The Baroness was ticked off by border staff, who did not recognise her. But she took offence when they told her how important security is. The 71-year-old Baroness, known for being haughty, ranted: "Of course I know how important it is, I'm the Security Minister."

Ironically, the former head of the British Joint Intelligence Committee was on her way to discuss the war on terror with US security chiefs. Her outburst at Heathrow Airport came just two days before an ink cartridge containing explosives was found in Britain on a US-bound cargo plane. A Whitehall source said: "No one could believe it when they heard about the rant. After all, the border staff were only doing their job.

Watch out, there's a copper about

This institution has the honour of having taught several Guantanamo Bay inmates, so I think it's safe to assume that MI5, 'Prevent' and other security services are familiar with the city, pork scratchings and Learning Works.

Now the secret police, in the form of Special Branch, will be all over us: the Universities Minister David Lammy has announced that these spooks will be stationed at extremist-friendly universities (by which of course they mean universities with Muslim students). You can bet that we're on the list, alongside London Met and a few others.

This is, of course, the sort of behaviour about which the UK Government complains when it happens elsewhere. You know the kind of report: grainy footage and a portentous voice-over saying something like 'Iranian student leaders were shocked today as the secret police moved in'.

So if you see a man in uncasual casual clothes offering Asian students a pork pie and noting the response, or peeking under burqas during lectures, you know who he works for. Tell him to piss off and investigate all the plagiarism instead. Then again, I'd better be careful - I've some pretty extremist views on medieval poetry myself.

Folletted

Why does Barbara Follett need £25,000 of private security - all paid for by the taxpayer?

She's a millionaire anyway.

She's Minister of Tourism, not Defence/FCO/Northern Ireland etc. It screams self-important, narcissistic loony.

The only enemies she has are the Labour MPs she mercilessly bullied in the 90s, when it was apparently her job to make them buy designer suits and have trendy haircuts to show how 'New Labour' they were (which insultingly assumes that voters actually make their choice by consulting GQ rather than on political matters). Her husband Ken also has enemies - literary critics and anybody who's bought one of his books at the airport.