IT WOULD SEEM THAT YOU CAN CLAP IN THE COMMONS...

...AS LONG AS YOU ARE AN ESTABLISHMENT LONDON PARTY

(Of course it helps if you are clapping in support of the Speaker)

IT SEEMS WE SHOULD BREED FROM BETTER STOCK

I’d have a lot more time for the Tory foot in mouth approach, which is “only good humoured joshing” according to their supporters, if they were a little more adept at taking what they are happy to hand out.

But the sensitivity when they are portrayed as a bunch of chinless wonders who went straight from Eton up to Oxford and from there into a safe seat in the shires knows no bounds. ‘That doesn’t mean anything’, say Tory supporters. ‘Just because they are rich it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the plight of the poor; just because they went to Eton it doesn’t mean they don’t understand what it is like to be at an inner city comprehensive’. But they can’t half dish it out.

I mean, I don’t hold with all this political correctness myself. I have no problem with the Prime Minister calling the Speaker a dwarf, as he apparently did for a cheap laugh, according to David Hughes (of the Telegraph). As a Scot I am not insulted in the least when as part of his speech he mocks Danny Alexander, his Chief Secretary for wearing a skirt. I frankly don’t give a thought to the fact that in discussing Ian Gilmour’s career his summation is “shit happens” (certainly does).

I’m not bothered that one of his rather dubious new appointees to the House of Endless Treasure has shown what he thinks about poor people “breeding”. After all, I doubt very much if there are a large number of people anywhere who give a stuff what Howard Flight thinks about anything at all, much less anything to do with breeding!! Even Michael Howard took steps to stop him from standing as an MP. And if Old Young (ha ha, I actually didn’t mean that) thinks that we’ve all had a great recession and doesn’t think that 500,000 redundancies adds up to a hill of beans, fine. Again, he’s just not important enough to bother much about. (Isn’t it lucky for him, though, that his resigning in disgrace means that he can still collect three hundred and odd quid a day, but this time for doing sod all!!?)

But they really have to accept that if they can say insensitive things about people, so can we lesser beings about them.

So wise up you bunch of toffee nosed posh Bullingdon boys and learn to take it like men... of course I said that with love, and I mean it in the nicest possible way.

Perhaps in the interests of fairness and balance it would be an apt time to point out that even the uber politically correct Harwoman thought herself above the rules when she called poor old Danny (he gets it from both sides... OK that’s enough!) a ginger rodent.

Politically incorrect pics: (1) Dave. I can see why he has his own photographer with his soft focus, and touch up facilities. He looks a bit rough and wrinkly and is that grey hair I see after only 6 months? (2) Howard is another one who could do with a face lift, now he’s got £300 a day coming in maybe he’ll at least get some botox. Too much breeding perhaps? (3) What untidy handwriting Howard. You’ll need to smarten up now you’re..bwa ha ha ...aristocracy... and thus must have (wait for it) BREEDING. (4) Ging: OK, I know it’s not a rodent. It was the best I could do. Wonder what he looks like in a skirt. (5) Well I’d say that Harry was looking drunk as a puggie here, but she’s only a girl and would probably cry.

In keeping with accepted political practice I now unreservedly apologise for any hurt I caused and withdraw my remarks completely.

SPEAKER BERCOW LIVES IN LA LA LAND

John Bercow was supposed to be the reforming Speaker. He was going to sort out parliament, make it accountable to the people (erm, which it was supposed to be all along) and deal with the scandal of expenses.

But he obviously, like so many other people in Westminster, seems to think that what’s good for other people is not necessarily good for him.

It seems that Mr Speaker Bercow has never heard of trains. He has, however, heard of chauffeur driven limos, and uses them to great effect.

Mr Bercow has used cars for 111 journeys, including 21 within the SW1 postcode, where he could have walked.

A trip to Oxford cost us £833 (you can do it for around £10 on the bus), whilst his visit to Canterbury cost £558; Gloucester cost £632 as did a visit to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.

Amazingly a journey to South Kensington no more than 3 miles from the Commons, cost £151.

Additionally, as if there were no financial crisis in the country he has spent £15,600 on business class flights for himself, his wife and his staff, employed a spin doctor at £107,000 a year and spent £45,000 on altering and redecorating the Speaker’s House, his grace and favour home in the Palace of Westminster to make it nicer for his children.

Hello Bercow, could you try to live in the same world as the rest of us. You’re an MP for heaven’s sake, not some deity.

You can maintain the dignity of the office perfectly well on the train. It is how YOU BEHAVE that marks your chairmanship of the commons, not how you travel, or the style in which you live.

TO ADD A LITTLE DIGNITY AND GRAVITAS, WE PRESENT MRS BERCOW

Any hopes that replacing disgraced Speaker Michael Martin with John Bercow was going to add a little much needed dignity to the House of Commons were dashed today when Mrs Bercow launched her attempt to become a Labour councillor with a Press Conference where she decided to get rid of all the baggage.

It seems that Mrs Bercow was a bit of a party girl and a “ladette” in her time at Oxford, where her drinking got a bit out of hand. She reckons that she slept around a bit and enjoyed life to the full and that, although she got a grip on her drinking, she resumed her behaviour in the mid 90s when she was working in advertising.

She became teetotal in 2000 after realizing that she had put herself in danger. “I was an argumentative, stroppy drunk, picking arguments with my bosses over stupid things. Plus I’d lose my judgment and put myself in danger. I’d fall asleep on the Tube and end up in Epping or Heathrow. And I’d get into unlicensed minicabs in the early hours. All the things we’d tell our daughters not to do.”

According to an article in The Times, she decided to get it all out in the open before she starts her bid for a political career as a Labour Councillor in Pimlico. But residents of the London borough shouldn’t get too used to her. She says that she wants to be an MP at the next election. (I’m sure, however, that she must mean the one after the next.....)


Some MPs wonder if her living at the taxpayers’ expense in Speakers House in the Palace of Westminster, whilst being a councillor or an MP might compromise the Speaker’s independence.

Actually, she doesn’t sound that bright to me. I respect her right to a job doing what she believes in regardless of her husband’s job, and admire her openness. It would all have come out anyway, but she was right to be open and up front from day one.

It’s her judgement I have problems with... This is a corker of a quote from the article: Asked how it might work if she was an MP while her husband was Speaker, she said: “He’d be so tough on me though. I’d never get a question when he was in the chair. I’d have to wait till the deputy speaker was in.”

Well, that would hardly be fair to your constituents Mrs Bercow, would it?

MORE OF THE SAME IN GLASGOW, AND MORE OF THE SAME IN WESTMINSTER

When, back in May, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the then Rt Hon Michael Martin MP was forced to resign, and a new Speaker was elected, we were promised a new broom attitude. No nonsense would be tolerated after what most people could agree was the inauspicious Speakership and humiliating removal of Martin.

So after what most people would describe as an unsatisfactory election, with Labour voting for the Tory that Tories love to hate, we got Mr Bercow. Was this the new broom we were promised?

Well, as far as expenses go, it would seem not. One of Mr Bercow’s first jobs was to appoint himself a “special advisor” (at £107,000 a year), whose job it is “to raise his personal profile”. As fellow blogger Tory Outcast asks... what for? He’s not there to have a personal profile. He’s there to be Speaker. Mr Bercow also seems to have ruled out any kind of retribution for the house flippers of the Duck Parliament. (In one way, not surprisingly since he is one himself; but in another way very surprisingly since there are two inquiries and a commission dealing with that issue, not to mention the law!)

New FOI revelations show that Mr Bercow has spent, in the first 6 months of his tenure of the office, £45,000 on doing up his grace and favour pad, Speaker’s House, despite the fact that Mr Martin spent a king's ransom on it. Apparently within days of his election his wife was sending emails saying that the wallpaper was very “boardroomish”, and demanding a bigger television and a dvd player for the children.

Hello, I thought: Could you not have bought one of your own? I mean just because you are living at our expense doesn’t mean you can’t make some sort of contribution. (In most cases when people are in state-owned housing, decorating it to their taste is their job.) Bring your own telly for the kids, don't expect us to buy them one; maybe you could bring your own clothes too?

Mr Bercow also spent £3,600 on a visit to Rome to attend the G8 Speaker’s’ Conference... what the hell is that for? In what way does this conference benefit the taxpayer? Still, Rome is nice, no one could deny that.

So! As usual with Westminster, we were cheated. Nothing is too good for the Bercows. We thought that change was the order of the day, and we were wrong. Same old, same old from Mr and Mrs Bercow. I wonder how quickly he can be got rid of?

IT'S BY-ELECTION DAY SO WE'LL HAVE MORE OF THE SAME PLEASE

Well today is by-election day. Remember, way back in the mists of time, well May, wasn’t it, when the Speaker resigned because the Commons had lost confidence in him... the first time for three hundred years... because he had been fiddling his expenses and encouraging an atmosphere where others could do the same?

It took a long time and much backbench muttering but eventually the party leaders, led by Nick Clegg, turned on him, he was disgraced and he had to go.

So very quietly they sent him packing to the Lords, where there was much muttering about him bringing Their Lordships’ House into disrepute, but where in reality, there are so many other thieving old gits that another one won’t be noticed. And they did nothing about replacing the man in the Commons, on the basis presumably that they didn't have enough volunteers to fill in all the Mickey Souris and Donald Canard postal votes.

Well, today, having seen (I read somewhere) an increase of 4,000 applications for said postal votes, Glasgow North East goes to the polls. After 70 odd years of Labour domination, it is one of the most deprived areas of Scotland, indeed of Europe.

It comes at the bottom in just about every single possible indicator, as you can see from this information copied from Mr Burton's excellent The Universality of Cheese blog.

http://the-universality-of-cheese.blogspot.com/2009/11/glasgow-north-east-press-silver-in-my.html

School leavers with no qualifications - 300 per cent higher than the Scottish average.

Teenage pregnancies – 60 per cent higher

Deaths from lung cancer – 94 per cent higher

Heart disease – 40 per cent higher

Folk on income support – 130 per cent higher than the national average

Unemployment rate – 140 per cent higher.


Looking at the photograph above, it makes you wonder, when you consider that, until May of this year, the most powerful commoner in the land, The Speaker of Her Majesty's House of Commons was their MP. There is no doubt at all in my mind that he could have got things done. When he spoke people listened. He wasn't just a little unimportant MP that civil servants treated with disdain. He was MR SPEAKER. No one wanted to be on the wrong side of him. If he asked, he got.

Instead he used his huge power and influence to line his nest, and that of his taxi loving wife and of his children and grandchildren. He claimed expenses that he had no right to and he used his enormous power to block investigations into all MPs' expenses, including spending vast amounts of taxpayers' money to ensure that taxpayers would remain in the dark about MPs' tastes for all that is expensive.

He misused the power that he could have used to make life better for people in his constituency.

Today the voters of this benighted place go to the polls.... and in all probablility they will vote Labour, because, after 70 years of there being a Labour MP in that area, they still think that Labour is the party for people like them.... Oh well....


There are some more photographs here. This is Labour’s legacy.


http://www.scottishreview.net/IMcLeod166.html