Tuesday 25 January 2011

MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

It now costs around £70 to fill an average family car with petrol, and that this is worrying for a “hard working British family”, who may only have around £250 disposable income, and with rent of £80 and council tax of a further £60 this can make life difficult. You could see the pain in the prime minister’s face. He really feels for us “hard-working British families”. He hasn’t said how he feels about spinster ladies and single people. I wonder how he feels about pensioners whose only way of getting shopping is to use their car. How does he think they manage with the most expensive fuel in the world in this oil rich nation? Indeed how does the poor man manage himself?

Mr Richard Baker is starting to campaign for re-election by bringing up the case of Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al Megrahi. He wanted to know how many letters and emails were received (and has been told) then he wanted them broken down into how many were for and how many against, and then he wanted to know how many civil servants were on the “Lockerbie team”, and then he wanted to know how many man hours had gone into dealing with the matter, and then he wanted to know how much it cost. (He’s very inquisitive, isn’t he?) He appears to be very concerned about how much this particular item has cost the Scottish taxpayer. I wonder if he’s considered how much time it would take and money it would cost to provide him with all this information so that he can go electioneering on it?

Mr Gray has started his election campaign, 100 days before the election, by highlighting (predictably) 100 SNP broken promises. They included promises which the SNP had not made. He also misquoted the SNP manifesto at least 20 times and mentioned items which are the responsibility of other parliaments. Moreover he included things that the SNP had brought forward and had been voted down by parliament. So as usual Mr Gray got his facts all wrong and mixed up promises broken with policies voted out by parliament. God help us if he is ever First Minister, but if he is, he will be able to rely on me to point out every single promise he breaks.

Our senior police officers were given bonuses amounting to more than £400,000 across the country last year, at a time when police forces are having to slash money from their budgets. Colin McKerracher, CBE, QPM, LlB, Chief Constable of Grampian Police, has suggested that part of the money confiscated as proceeds of crime could be used to subsidise the police in future. Could this be because he was one of only two Chief Constables that accepted his bonus? It seems to me that, like in every other walk of life, those at the top will always look after themselves, regardless of the effects on other people. Me me me me me is the motto of the senior people.

John Taylor has been found guilty of stealing over £11,000 of public money. As a barrister surely he must have been bright enough to realise that the “advice” given by fellow peers that “any family connection with an address” was enough to justify claiming that it was a first residence for the purposes of claiming expenses, especially as if he had never even been to the house, never mind lived there. I hope his lordship will have time in the pokey to reflect on his limited understanding of the legal system, and perhaps do some revision. He is safe in the knowledge, however, that even if he gets more than a year’s sentence he will still be able to resume his seat in the House upon release, and restart his expenses business.


12 comments:

  1. Somebody wants to tell Iain Gray and the rest of the Labour clique the difference between the set of aspirations that is a manifesto and a “promise” or indeed (note to lib Dems) a pledge. I’m wondering if, when we finally get to see his Labour manifesto if every single word in it is going to be a “promise” that him and Labour are going to implement no matter what. Somehow I doubt it! And when that happens we will all be their pointing out their list of “broken promises”.

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  2. ... And personal humiliations Munguin. Don't forget that. When parliament votes against a government proposal, it isn't democracy at work, it's a personal humiliation.

    The pièce de resistance in his manifesto appears to be to start up a jobs scheme for the young (just like the English government is doing but with a few differences).

    However, and remember that this is the shining star in Labour's proposals, they will need extra money from the Conservative Government in England to make it happen... and they need companies to come on board...

    So I can see IDS making a special effort to give Labour extra money so that the joblessness that afflicts England every bit as much as it does Scotland can have money thrown at it here that they (the Conservative voting English) won't get.

    Of course they will!

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  3. The biggest “personal humiliation” is the one that little tit must feel after every FMQ!

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  4. I don't think he even realises how stupid he looks at FMQ. He's even worse than Ed.

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  5. Tris,

    I was very amused by the disagreement betwen SNP and Labour about when minus 100 days hits.

    Gray measured it till the end of polling closes...Alex rejected this and said it runs till election till election day.

    LOLz, they can't even find agreement WHEN the election is! I smell a typically bitter, nasty, lie-filled campaign. I do NOT look forward to it.

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  6. Tris,

    I cannot recall any government, far less a minority government, who have kept to their election manifesto.

    Dean,

    As a Tory it's hardly surprising that you're not lookiing forward to this election. Excellent summing up of Baker, btw.

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  7. Dean,

    I've always thought that perhaps one of the SNP's downfalls is that they are not half nasty enough with the bunch of half witted eejots that form the main opposition.

    Apart from Alex using Elmer Fudd as a broom to sweep the chamber floor, they aren't particularly aggressive.

    I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not.

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  8. PS. Why are you being so kind to Baker. He won't thank you for it:)

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  9. Of course not John. If your policies are voted down; they are voted down. That is what democracy is about. And of course it is bound to happen more often in a parliament where the government is in a minority and depends upon consensus to legislate. Needless to say achieving consensus with people out to do you down for their own political ends doesn't always work.

    Apparently democracy is not like that in La La Labour land (no I don't have a stutter.) Mr Blair, for example, never let the people's wishes interfere with his agenda to get rich and win the congressional medal, sorry I meant of course, to run the country in accordance with the constitution.

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  10. Hard to imagine anyone thicker than Baker. As Calum points out the Convention on Human Rights which was eventually adopted by Scotland, was a child of the Council of Europe. IT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION and bananas.

    Mr Baker likes a cheap jibe, but again as Calum points out IT WAS A LABOUR EXECUTIVE THAT APPROVED THE ADOPTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACT INTO SCOTLAND.

    It is a truly scary proposition that, in a few months time, there is a possibility that this man's party may be in government and that this idiot might hold ministerial office.

    Incidentally, while like most people I have issues with how solicitors, gagging to make even more money and caring not a whit about justice, as prepared to bend the Human Rights laws to their ends, I balk at Cameron’s idea of coming out of the European one (which we helped draft at the end of the war), and have a British one instead.

    Could you just imagine what rights this lot would let us have?

    We should remember when we criticise HR legislation, what it would be like to have none. We went to war to preserve them.

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