HARLEM NOCTURNE...

I remember this tune as the theme to the '80s

TV show MIKE HAMMER, starring STACY KEACH,

but here's a version (with lyrics) by MEL TORME that

pre-dates it, and which I hope you'll all enjoy.

SHIFTY, SHOCKING & 'SACKED'...

Would you trust this shifty-looking man?

MP MALCOLM RIFKIND is a perfect example of why the general public no longer have any faith in, or respect for, politicians.  Caught on film boasting of being able to see any foreign ambassador in London and having "useful access" to every British ambassador in the world while trying to sell his services to a fictitious Hong Kong communications agency, he describes the 'allegations' against him as "contemptible" and insists that he's "done nothing wrong" and "broken no rules".  That being the case, why has he now resigned as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee and announced he'll not be seeking re-election as MP for Kensington in West London?  Hardly the response of an innocent man, I'd venture.

Claiming to be "self-employed" despite being paid a salary of £67,000 per annum (not counting expenses and all the usual perks) by the British taxpayer, he also says he has an unbelievable amount of free time to read or go walking, which surely only means that he's paid a disproportionate recompense for what is essentially a part-time job.  However, it is his arrogant sense of entitlement which is truly nauseating, believing he is worth more than the immense salary he already receives.  (The very one that he seems to think no one pays him.)

He's typical of the self-important, out-of-touch politicians who seek to deny the poorest in our society the relatively meagre amounts they rely on to get by, while lining their own pockets with as much as they can stuff into them; who try to force the unemployed and the ill into jobs that either don't exist or are so poorly paid that it's not worth taking them.  "Is it right that an unemployed person should get more money than someone who works?" they disingenuously enquire.  Well, ignoring the fact that most unemployed people don't, the answer of course, is "No!"  However, in the relatively few cases that do, it's not because benefits (in the main) are too high, it's because wages are too low.  If they want to end the so-called 'benefits culture' then why don't they try coming up with some policies that create jobs which pay a decent living wage?

As disgraced Malcolm Rifkind has so ably demonstrated, they're far more concerned with creating over-paid jobs for themselves.  Anyone else sick of the lot of them?

******

And their latest 'wheeze' is to try and make people work 30 hours a week for their benefits, which is nothing other than slave-labour.  If they expect folk to work for 30 hours, then they should pay them the going-rate for doing so.