Ex-energy secretary, Chris Huhne, is if he wishes to accept it, entitled under current legislation, to a severance payment of more than £17,000.
Under the terms of the 1991 Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act, Mr Huhne is allowed three months-worth of his £68,827 annual ministerial pay (or £17,207).
This is, presumably, like other redundancy payments made to "ordinary, decent, hard-working families up and down the country" to compensate them for being dismissed from their posts through no fault of their own, and to help them to come to terms with life on the generous £67 a week that the government decrees sufficient for said "ordinary, decent, ex-hard-working people up and down the country" to live on.
Of course, these "ordinary, decent, ...well, you know how it goes by now" would have to have been working for over 2 years in the post; they would only get (at Huhne's age) 1.5 weeks' money for every full year they had worked there (so 1 week's money or around £2,000), and it wouldn't apply if they had only lost a part of their job, and still had a salary of £66,000 to fall back on... or if they had resigned. So actually he wouldn't get squat.
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However, we all know only too well that Secretaries of State and "ordinary, decent, hard-working families up and down the country" have about as much in common as 'the Big Society' and oh, I dunno, ...a prime ministerial legacy?
Mr Huhne may not accept the money. But whether or not he does, should not the conditions for ministers more accurately mirror those for all these people that they happily use as examples when they want to make a point, and should they not also reflect the times that we live in.
After all, although we rarely hear anything of it these days, we are all in this together, aren't we?
Hopefully his cell is heated using solar panels and windmills and Big Bubba is waiting to meet him.
ReplyDeleteHe'll probably get his gay lover Carina to do the time for him.
Couldn't happen to a nicer hoon.
Now now, throbber.
ReplyDeleteMr Huhne is innocent until proven guilty under English law, just like the millions of hard working decent English families up and down the country...
Yawn...
So, what we are paying for is a man who has allegedly committed perjury in the courts. Let's hope that if he is found guilty then he gets a year in jail which would disqualify him from being an MP.
ReplyDeleteI await with baited breath to see how the law, if he is found guilty, will do a body swerve around giving him what he would be due under the law. The joys of belonging to a Union which is riddled with corruption.
Well, I don't want to pre-judge him Ged. His ex-wife is (with reason) rather bitter, having been used to help him secure his election by playing the happy family card with him, only to be dropped the minute the campaign was over and his constituents had been fooled into voting for him.
ReplyDeleteAlthough she will suffer herself from these allegations, she may have made them in spite, to hurt an ambitious man who had reached a position that, in politics, he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams.
My problem is that this lot managed in 1991 to sort themselves a nice little package of redundancy payments that don't begin to be in the same universe as those that the rest of us enjoy.
Indeed, while they change conditions of employment, removing rights and privileges for the rest of us, citing the need to make ourselves more business friendly, there seems to have been a strange oversight when it comes to their own terms.
Maybe, when it comes to MPs they just feel the need to be self-friendly...?
Roll on to the exit door to get away from these political wonks.
ReplyDeleteTris,
ReplyDeleteYes, you are right. We should just dispense with the trial and go straight to the verdict of hang 'em high.
Ah... right CH...which political wonks in particular, or ALL political wonks?
ReplyDeleteAh... teh good old English justice system.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that government trying to get rid of trial by jury because it's too expensive?
Because I heard Huhne telling us all that he was sure that a British (he means English) jury would clear him.
Pfffff.
So, they don't get rid of juries for cabinet minister, or, to be exact, ex-cabinet ministers.
To be fair to Huhne, he was apparently the only Liberal Democrat to tell Cameron where he got off. So Cameron will be glad to see him go, no matter what the letters said.
interesting that back in 2007, most of the libdem msps had backed Chris Huhne
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_leadership_election,_2007
Tris,
ReplyDelete"So Cameron will be glad to see him go, no matter what the letters said."
MI5 anyone?
Fistly Diln...hello, and welcome. Yes, I see looking at that site that MSPs had a majority for Huhne. Interestingly the same piece tells us that:
ReplyDelete"About 1,300 postal votes were caught up in the Christmas post and missed the election deadline. An unofficial check of the late papers showed Huhne had enough votes among them to hand him victory. Huhne stood by the result, saying "Nick Clegg won fair and square on the rules counting the ballot papers that arrived in by the deadline. There is no question of any re-run."[28][29]"
So, if it hadn't been for the postal system and/or the fact that some people left it very late to send their votes, Huhne would have been the leader.
Reading through some of his policies, and the fact that he seems aable and willing to stand up to Call Me... he probably would have made a better job of a coalition.
Yes Ged...always possible. At least Huhne is still alive which is a positive in comparison to some ... Dave Kelly, for example.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just Huhne who may be guilty of a crime but the entire Libdem party who are financed from the proceeds of crime.
ReplyDeleteIf I commit a monetary crime and share the proceeds with you and you spend it on riotous living - an alien concept to me, of course - then we are both criminally guilty and would be sentenced according. At the very least we would have the proceeds confiscated.
However, the sames does not seem to apply to the Libdem and this has been deemed to be acceptable to the Electoral Comnmission.
Is this the same Electoral Commission who will be running and, presumbly, setting the question(s) to be asked in the independence referendum?
"presumbly" is a new word I've invented. It's a combination of "presbyterian" and "humbly". Do you like it? I'll get me coat.
ReplyDeleteJB,
ReplyDeleteRofl
Yaaaaay. He's back, and, rather like Mr Johnson, who also had a sojourn in the islands, he's writing a dictionary.
ReplyDeleteCan I ask when you are going to start sharing your ill-gotten gains with us Mr Brownlie, instead of popping down to Edinburgh and purchasing sherry for Ms Pangloss in the hopes that in so doing you will be able to avail yourself of her favours?
***
Soooo, this will be the same electoral commission, will it, that is to "oversee" our referendum on freedom?
(No, I don't think it's fair to say "freedom" either, but as long as that bloody woman Lamont, and the other bloody woman, Davidson, and everyone else, continue to use the word "separation" in every bloody sentence, I shall try to restore some balance by using "FREEDOM".)
Anyway...welcome back, John! ;¬)
Aye Ged, he's a card is oor John, is he no!
ReplyDeleteWhose deal?
ReplyDeleteWhere did you find that CH?
ReplyDeletehere
ReplyDeleteMy missus is facing being out of work after 25+ years of service through medical reasons, the way it is going at the minute it looks like she will get 12 weeks pay and a card from the other staff...you can imagine the rest of the consequences entailing with such a happening (which by the way is why I am not about much at the moment, there is much that needs sorting out at this end...a new home may be one of them...I/we are not tres happy about huge payoffs to crooks as you may imagine!)
ReplyDelete