REJOICE AT THAT NEWS: A MODICUM OF JUSTICE AT LAST FOR ONE OF OUR (NOW EX) MPS

The Liberal Democrats are, I suspect, about to find out that success can be a double edge sword.

Phil “Lumley” Woolas, a former Labour minister has lost the case brought against him by his Liberal opponent in the last UK General Election.

He is to be barred from the Commons for three years and the election contest for his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat re-run. Woolas, however has said that he will fight the ruling and will seek a judicial review.

The judgement says that he broke electoral law with a "toxic" dirty tricks campaign against Elywn Watkins. Basically he lied through his teeth about Watkins and his association with and funding by Muslim fanatics. Lying to the public becomes such a habit that he must have imagined he could get away with whoppers like this. His team hoped to bring out the white Sun-reading vote by exploiting the racial divide in Oldham.

His win, by 103 votes, has been declared void. He was ordered to pay £5,000 to Mr Watkins, whose costs he will also have to pay.

Woolas apparently feared that he would lose his seat following disclosures about his expense claims which included submitting receipts for items including tampons and women's clothing.

He had also bought himself a deal of derision with his mishandling of Gurkha resettlement rights and was lampooned over his hapless confrontation with Joanna Lumley who tanked him despite her complete lack of political experience.

However, whilst, if Woolas hadn’t lied and cheated his way to his seat the Liberal Democrat would now be sitting in parliament, the situation for Liberals all over the country has changed dramatically since last May.

Recently clocking an amazing 9% in a YouGov poll, the Liberals are not half, or even a third of the party they were only 7 short months ago when they were polling 29-32% following poster boy Nick Clegg’s appearance in the leaders’ (or a least “some” leaders’) debates. They may find, therefore, that they face a very different situation on the streets today.

I wonder by how much Labour will win the seat now...

Interesting irony here that the Shadow Immigration Minister played a race card to cheat his way into his seat. A racist ex-Immigration Minister, now ex-Shadow Immigration Minister...tsk tsk....

MPs DON'T WANT TO FUND THE "INDEPENDENT" COMMITTEE THAT TRIES TO STOP THEM FIDDLING....

Well...would you look at the expression on that little piggy’s face.

The angry and defiant look from Mr Woolas, or Wool Ass as I prefer to call him is, it seems, directed at the new parliamentary expenses agency. Perhaps they have refused him his wife’s cosmetics, blouses and underwear on his expenses.

According to the Telegraph, disgruntled MPs have threatened to bring down the new supposedly independent allowances watchdog in protest at being treated like ordinary human beings and not the gods they think they are.

Now when I say it is independent, I use the word loosely because the MPs have to vote for its funding. They have already had some of the rules changed because it took time for them to get their money..... and they are not like ordinary people and have to make arrangements to suit when public bodies mess them around.

So members of the Speaker’s committee refused to sign off on the budget for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) and demanded officials provide new information before they would agreed to fund the body, raising the prospect that it will not be able to continue.

That’s the way to do it guys. I wish I could just refuse to fund the Revenue or Jobcentre Plus or DVLA or TV Licencing.... or whoever happens to be making a mess of my finances this week. Come to that I wish I could stop financing the Royal Bank!

MPs crowded the committee room and shouted and barracked the staff of the IPSA as they answered questions. (It’s nice to know that they can get really worked up about something, isn’t it?) and one was heard to shout “Bastards”, perhaps after a particularly liquid lunch, possibly on expenses, so it’s good to know that our representatives are showing our kids a good example on the behaviour front.

Presumably they will be fighting with equal vigour the next time that one of their constituents gets done over by some public body. Or maybe they’ll just yawn and pass the letter over to some clerk to deal with.

Bob Russell, LibDem, called the organization the most inefficient he had known in 40 years of public office. He should get out more. Really!

Nick Brown, Labour Chief Whip, indicated that there were no satisfied MPs... Well of course there aren’t, you balloon. No one who has had an open cheque book for years and years is ever happy with being kept in check! People like Winterton resigned because of it.

Charles Walker, Conservative, accused IPSA of wasting money after a compliance officer was appointed to investigate questionable claims. Erm, Charlie, don’t we have the same sort of thing on TV Licences, Tax, Social Security? Aren’t there snoopers all over the country making sure that we stump up and don’t cheat? Why would you be different?

On the basis that evidence turned up by the Daily Telegraph showed that over 50% of your number cheated on their expenses and took what was not there (in other parlance stole), I think it’s not unreasonable that you should be treated just like ordinary mortals.

A word of warning: don’t try to mess with this committee you set of conniving, dreary little cheats. We’re angry. You should know that. We haven’t forgotten. We are all suffering hardships to pay back for the incompetences of the last few years. Don’t add insult to our injury by continuing to assume that you are above it all. That would be really foolish.


Pics: Phil Woolas, Joanna Lumley's doormat, a collection of MPs, and Charles Walker who clearly has been off planet over the last year or so... out to lunch maybe (they have long lunch breaks in parliament)?

LUMLEY 2 : UK GOVERNMENT 0

You’d think that even a government as full of third raters as Labour in London would have “learned lessons” from the last time they were stupid enough to tangle with Joanna Lumley.

But no. Alas, one junior member of it was too thick to grasp that it was dangerous to so do, especially without checking facts, and clearing it with the PM. So he used parliamentary privilege to slander both Joanna and the company of solicitors that she was working with in the Gurkha campaign.

Kevan Jones (never heard of him but he is nonetheless another minister at the Department of Defence), giving evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee earlier this month said Ms Lumley and fellow campaigners had not done enough to explain to Gurkhas the new rules permitting any of them with more than four years' service to apply to settle in the UK.

There has been some criticism in the press of the way that some Gurkhas have been treated on arrival in the UK, but this can in no way be laid at the door of either Joanna, or the solicitors Howe and Co whom Jones also deprecated. It seems to me that the MoD, which is charged with co-ordinating this matter, is at fault for failing to ensure that veterans are put in touch with the service welfare organisations.

The hapless Jones criticised Ms Lumley’s silence on the matter; he said he found it irritating. However Joanna explained on radio this evening that she had agreed to work with Gordon Brown and Number 10 on the issue. She said: "Last year Gordon Brown took personal charge of the Gurkha issue. He asked us to deal with No 10 , out of the glare of publicity. We respected his request and kept our promise."

After putting up with weeks of rumours and then Jones’s remarks (made under parliamentary privilege), Ms Lumley, Howe & Co, and the Gurkha Justice Campaign called a press conference today at which Ms Lumley said she had come along “with a sense of regret, that we've had to come to this... clearing our names in public".

She said articles had appeared "which must have put doubt into the hearts of all the people who supported the Gurkha justice campaign". She urged the prime minister "to affirm that the policy is one that he still completely supports".

This afternoon Jones apologised to Ms Lumley for any offence his remarks had caused her, but he was unavailable for interview. Doubtless he was trying to extract a Nokia from his left nostril, aware that only the proximity of the election had saved his sorry ass from repositioning itself on the back benches.

Joanna confirmed that Brown had spoken with her on the phone after the press conference. He read out Jones’s apology and added one of his own and did indeed confirm his commitment to the policy.

Damned right. If these men are good enough to lay their lives on the line for the UK, the least we can do is see them settled here if that is what they wish.

Message to incoming government whoever they are. Don’t mess with JL. She’ll eat you for breakfast, and the British public will devour the leftovers.

Pictured: The truly Absolutely Fabulous Joanna Lumley; the truely abolutely unfabulous Kevan Jones and the statue outside the MoD, London, to the Gurkhas

PS: Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw said about Gurkhas: "If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha."

Ayo Gorkhali, Ayo Joanna Lumley

The government of Gordon Brown has been inept, pathetic, incompetent, and laughable in turn since about 2-3 weeks after he was elevated to Prime Minister in his ‘Buggin’s Turn’ promotion in 2007.

Although there may have been more far reaching muddles and incompetence in the last two and a half years, no other situation has quite tugged at the nation’s heartstrings like the story of the Gurkhas.

We all know the story. Most people felt that if you were good enough to risk your life fighting for Britain, not as a mercenary, but in a constituted part of the British Army, then the least the British Government could do would be to offer you a home here in retirement. Labour felt differently; it would cost a great deal of money. And, being a government with a solid majority, that was that, despite opposition from both Nick Clegg and David Cameron.

But the Government reckoned without Joanna Lumley.

The daughter of an officer in the 6th Gurkha Rifles whose life was saved during the war by one of his men, Tul Bahadur Pun, Lumley was brought up in Malaya. Her acting career in Britain started in the 60s as a “dolly bird” secret agent type in “The New Avengers” and she went on to play similar roles including in “Sapphire and Steel” with "Man from Uncle" star David McCallum. In the 90s she became the beloved drunken druggie patsy in Absolutely Fabulous (the star of the show for me). Clearly, however, there is a deal more to Ms Lumley than that.

When you followed it on tv and in the papers, it was obvious from the start that Woolas and Brown didn't stand a chance. Brown told the Commons that the Government was looking into the case of the five Gurkhas who wanted to come to Britain “as a matter of urgency”, only for the five men to receive letters of rejection the next day. (Way to go Brown... How much more incompetent can you get?)

Lumley and her fellow campaigners were set to denounce the Government at an impromptu press conference when she chanced upon Mr Woolas. Negotiations were held and the two of them addressed the cameras. “I think we are all agreed that we are going to be able to help in the formulation of new guidelines,” Lumley announced, daring Mr Woolas to contradict her. “So that will be wonderful.” The minister blathered about “proper processes”, his face a mixture of fear and wonderment at this creature who seemed to have taken every ounce of any power he ever had. Victory was inevitable.

Since then Joanna Lumley has visited Nepal where she was feted as a national hero and had a mountain named after her. Today she was named The Times’s Briton of the Year.

Congratulations Joanna. Job done!