"From: SWAYNE, Desmond
Sent: 16 May 2012 10:45
Subject: PMQs
Comrades,
Sent: 16 May 2012 10:45
Subject: PMQs
Comrades,
..........I anticipate lots of LoL gags so let's have a protective wall of sound. If Ed even grudgingly acknowledges anything positive in to-day's unemployment figures then instantaneously bring down the roof 'yereyereyere...". Notwithstanding the unemployment figures I anticipate the main attack will be 'recession made in downing street ... eurozone avoided UK double dip ... etc' so can we have lots of positive endorsements of our strategy using local examples of export success/expansion.....
"....Last week we rather dried up as the half hour wore on, and comrades at the end of the order paper did not enjoy as vociferous support as they deserved … Please show sufficient stamina for full half hour.”
It appears that the stamina of the Tory Party, when it comes to supporting Cameron, is a bit lacklustre and has to be stirred, if not shaken up, on a weekly basis. Still, it's a bit embarrassing for Cameron because in victory speech after the last election his line on the Commons, like that of so many before him, was: "...“I’m fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster — the name-calling, back-biting, point-scoring, finger-pointing.”
Well, not THAT fed up David, it would seem.
On the subject of the Tories, two other interesting items caught my eye this evening.
The first was the story of the fragrant Ms Warsi, who is now being investigated by the police for expenses fraud. And the other is that David Mellor, who was Culture Secretary for Britain in the last Tory government, has advised that the guy who took up the brief for Culture in England (including the Olympics), one Jeremy Hunt, will have to resign after the Olympics because he has lost all credibility. He goes on to make rather less than flattering comments about Dave Cameron too...
"But I think the real scalp is the Prime Minister – he won’t have to resign but his credibility is blown away.
“He has been exposed as a shallow, callow sort of guy who doesn’t have too many aims and ambitions and cant even get basic judgement calls right.”
That's his friends... I wonder what his enemies are saying!
This woman, Baroness Warsi, has to go - from the Cabinet and from the House of Lords. Sleeze seems to characterize this tired government. It's time for themn to go too.
ReplyDeleteBill, welcome to Munguin's Republic.
ReplyDeleteI agree, although it appears that there is no mechanism in the "constitution" for a life peer to give up his/her peerage.
This has been the excuse for allowing criminals to leave jail, pass Go, as it were, and immediately collect £300+ tax free (which at least stops them dodging tax) a day in expenses.
It seems to be beyond the wit of the government to prepare a law to enable Lords to stand down, or be removed. This, given their mishandling of everything else, is not particularly surprising.
You describe them as tired, and a phrase of my granny's comes to mind: "They were born tired and never got a rest!"
tris
ReplyDeleteOh do come on just watch the snp chorus at holyrood now you would have to very silly not accept they are orchestrated by the snp leadership.
as for warsi being a working class Pakistani she has many many white male enemies in tne Conservative party....you can expect her to have her head chopped off shortly.she unlike Hunt is def not one of the Chums
I don't think, Niko, that they get instructions. Eck is just so amusing as he demolishes wee Jimmy and Ruthie, that they can't help but clap as he scores another point. I think it's pretty much the same for Jimmy. She just stuns the Labour members with her wit (actually she can be funny, she just hasn't quite mastered timing which is all in comedy).
ReplyDeleteI have to say, anti Tory that I am, that the only one who could handle Eck was Annabel, but she was a lawyer and trained to do that... and she was clever enough to understand how minority government worked. I miss her. Ruth is no fun at all.
Warsi ticked loads of boxes...working class, Asian, from what they call up north, and we call down south, and a woman to boot... If she'd just been a disabled lesbian she would have been Home Secretary. She couldn't have made a bigger mess of it than old Tessy Kinky Boots.
I wasn't sure about Hunt but I just looked him up and he is a toff. Charterhouse and Oxford... another First.
But he'll still have to go. He's making Cameron look even worse than normal.
Did you all notice in the last instalment of FMQs how wee Jimmie Krankie’s Glasgow pub humour got ahead of her troops and they failed to laugh at the appropriate moment. It threw her completely off kilter and she actually had to look at her dumb-dumb sheets to make sure she had said it right. And then, the rent-a-laugh crowd caught up and burst in to “spontaneous” laughter at the wrong moment! What a performance! Perhaps the labour benches could have an applause light that Jimmie can put on when she wants the veg to become animated!
ReplyDeleteAs for the good baroness, caught with her hands in the till eh! Oh dear! I see that support from her dear colleagues has been less than the usual vociferous excuses and apologia. Surely they can’t not like their coloured female associate from up north? Where else will they get an apologist that ticks all the boxes to send along to make a fool of herself on question time? If she wasn’t so ghastly one could feel sorry for her in that male dominated, Caucasian and “heterosexual” club (please note the inverted commas as Tories and Lib Dems can often not be totally heterosexual but can simply be pretending and availing themselves of the proverbial “beard”).
ReplyDeleteYes Munguin FMQs was a hoot, Jimmy was at her worst. She remind me of a kiddie in the class nativity play delivering the lines but with no real concept of their meaning. This of course is perfectly reasonable in a 7 year old. The only time that she shows any of herself is in the "Och awa'" hand movements which would be more at home over the garden fence when gossiping about Mrs McTavish...
ReplyDeleteAs for Warsi, I don't have any sympathy at all. For heaven's sake, she knew that people were on the look out for thieves in the upper reaches of society, particularly after Haddingfield dobbed his fellow aristocratettes in with his "80% of them were doing it" excuse.
Thank goodness 80% of the people who claim benefits at the lower end of the social scale are NOT stealing at the rate of these nobles. Georgie Porgie would have to raise taxes to pay for them.
If she is guilty, throw the book at her (I for one would like to do that literally, aiming for between the corrupt money-grubbing eyes) ... any other walk of life this kind of expenses corruption would lead to dismissal ... oh ... forgot ... she isn't elected to any job that she can be dismissed from - not elected at all actually.
ReplyDeleteGot to love patronage and class stratificational society.
tris
ReplyDeletehave a look at this
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/05/michael-gove-leveson-wireless-generation-joel-klein/
Gove another Tory stinking tricksy liar
Dean,
ReplyDeleteMost of the lords got away with it. They picked a few, just like in the Commons, and used them to placate the hoards baying for blood.
The Lords has its own rules, and Inspector Clueless from the Met thought it would be too difficult to jump the hoops that the Lords authorities would put in their way. (But then, the Met would find it too difficult, it seems, to do tell the time, unless, of course, they were getting something from the press in return.)
Some of the peers were dealt with by the Lords authorities... which meant that they were suspended for a few months. They were soon back in the saddle and at the trough.
But you are right. They cannot be dismissed from their position. That woman has a £300+ a day job for life. There is no mechanism to remove them, and they can only be suspended for a short time. Apparently they found a way to allow hereditary peers to reject their title when Alec Douglas Home wanted to go to the Commons to become prime minister (although Tony Benn had been trying unsuccessfully for some time to do that [without being PM!]). They haven't found a way to stand Life Peers down.
She can however be sacked from her incredibly lucrative Cabinet Minister's position, and if, at it seems, she is guilty, presumably Cameron will have to reshuffle her out.
(I have never understood why party chairmen, of whatever party, are entitled to sit in cabinet, and receive a salary.)
Jeez Niko.
ReplyDeleteImagine the English Education Secretary spending all that time with a guy from his old company (where his wife still works) and not knowing which company the guy worked for, and why he was there... Just amazing. Dunno who does his briefing...
Of course it's not at all amazing, is it. Gove is, as you say, another one who is up to neck in mire.
He should have to go if he has lied in front of Leveson. At this rate there will be none of the cabinet left.