And Another Thing…

I doubt any Nats will be losing too much sleep over your lack of endorsement, matey. Actually, I suspect they’d be more concerned if you didn’t declare your undying hatred.

As for Lord Fireraiser, who didn’t raise a glass at that particular piece of news? Just a shame he wasn’t made to serve the full sentence.

Fair comment Tom. 4 years. Absolutely.

So roughly around the time of the last election. It’s obviously right to hold Labour to account in same way.

Shall we start with Page 15 of the Labour 2005 Manifesto – “Low debt and high employment [snip]we will borrow only to invest, and keep net debt at a stable and prudent level.

Page 16 – “We will not raise the basic or top rates of income tax in the next Parliament.”

Any others ? Let’s be honest – could rip apart the pledges given. Another ? Oh ok, just for fun – let’s skip to the end “Labour remains committed to reviewing the experience of the new electoral systems”. It would be funny is it weren’t so tragic.

So, if Scottish Nats are the “nasty party” what exactly are Labour? And by your own reckoning we should hold this against you until say 2025 as a minimum ?

OK. Will do.

>> Nasty? Like getting drunk and nearly burning down a hotel?

I don’t know if the local arsonists who burnt down an English owned hotel near Helmdsale in the 1990s were drunk or not…

… it is a great shame about SU, and the obsessive pursuit of him across different blogs pointed to an inner violence *here* *and* *now*.

I don’t go out on the doorsteps to promote hate and fear – why would I?!

I give a positive account of Scotland and what we could achieve as an independent nation. It’s the unionist parties who say time and time again that we’re too small, weak and stupid to govern ourselves.

As reported in the Press last weekend, Labour in Scotland appears to be new bestest friends with the Orange Order.
You have the gall to call the SNP nasty after this?

Chris-upon-Thames

I tried refuting a similar accusation on one of these blogs a few days ago, but was moderated off by our wonderful host. A lady called Kiera quoted a letter from the Scotsman or Herald where a Nat was accusing a Labour politician of being a “quisling”, and suggested this was evidence of Nationalist hatred for unionists.

I suggested she should actually read the content of the letter, which accused Labour of failing Scotland’s under-priviledged for decades, but as a committed unionist herself, she couldn’t admit that.

I think my post was spiked because I contended that whilst the SNP would always put Scotland first, Labour, Tories and Lib Dems all owed allegiance to London first, Scotland second, and that they would happily empty their bladder over Scotland if it was politically expedient so to do. (I actually used the same word you did above, which is clearly only allowed if used as an insult to the SNP.)

Accusing Scottish Nationalists of having a ‘hatred’ agenda is empty, and lazy, and has been seen through by more and more Scots for what it is; an attempt to bracket them along with other, more blatantly confrontational nationalist organisations like the BNP or Irish Nationalists, neither of which have anything in common with the SNP.

It is significant, I believe that Labour supporters are now reduced to a continual chorus of low level abuse and ad hominem attacks, since it confirms they have nothing to say when it comes to policy and delivery.

Ah, so it’s a ‘hate fest’ because they attack other political parties such as Labour (who are of course above such things – as I’m sure those fine upstanding ‘gentlemen’ Derek Draper and Damien McBride will attest).
I thought for a moment you were slyly trying to imply that there was a racial element to it. But, of course, you were not.
You’re just another petulant Labourite who has spit out the dummy Tom.

And Chris upon Thames, check out the Guardian comments, or any of the online English nationals and you’ll see the routine racism against Scots that passes for fair comment.
The element of the online ‘nationalist community’ (if there is such a thing) that indulges in such drivel is a very small minority indeed. I understand their frustration (if not their intolerance) when we have a mainstream media which is uniformly unionist despite the fact that a very significant minority of voters believe in independence.
Also, please don’t conflate your rather simplisticly negative idea of nationalism with a belief in independence. We can see the result of nasty nationalism in Norway of course. What a bunch of inward-looking trouble makers they are. Or Finland – another international pariah. Or those nasty Latvians – see how independence leads to evil, insular regimes!
It’s ironic that many ‘nationalists’ now lauded internationally (although they are now rarely referred to as nationalists of course), were reviled and demonised by the establishment of the state they sought to secede from.
The sainted Ghandi was a sly wee bugger once upon a time. Charles Parnell was a supporter of murderers you know.
History will decide – and history is always written by the victors.

Tom

You are a decent man, and I greatly enjoy your blog. However it is important to stand back a bit here. There will always be a “special” tension between Labour and the SNP … tradtionally Labour holds power across large swathes of Central Scotland and for the SNP to grow it has to make inroads into that Labour base.

Although I have been less active in recent years (I’m a Liberal Democrat) over the years as an activist and candidate, much in inner city Glasgow and Edinburgh I have found most activists and campaigners from other parties to be courteous and engaging and rivalry to be good humoured. But we’ve all heard stories of bad behaviour from other parties and all party managers know they sometimes have to reign in their people.

The SNP are not the BNP and independence is a legitimate political belief and topic for debate and discussion. What honourable people can do is not to indulge in abuse and personal comment against those with whom we do not agree and make sure that we keep our own houses in order and our integrity intact.

>> Having religiously avoided coverage of this year’s conference on account of my embarrassment threshold being too low,

Best not look at this, then.

BoT, you were given the text. If Googling is too difficult, try

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/politics/Murphy-Labour-has-learnt-lesson.5747329.jp

>> As reported in the Press last weekend, Labour in Scotland appears to be new bestest friends with the Orange Order.

For goodness sake, man, Labour has yet to say, come on in, welcome! Where’s the Bushmills?

Given that the SNP has said pretty much that to the Scottish-Islamic Foundation, run by the Saeed family (several of whom have been deeply involved in the regional Muslim Association of Britain), where do *you* get the gall to say that?

Oh, actually, you have just demonstrated what others have been saying about casual smeers.

oh, for goodness sake! I am not, for the 37th time, a cybernat! (green ink)

But you cannot use a gambit and then retreat when it returns to bite you on the bum.

To be honest, if what you say is true, it was a cheap shot.

But I don’t feel I have to apologise for everything my party of choice does anymore than you do.

You are losing it a bit here Tom.

Describing someone dying in what can be a pretty horrible way as “not feeling very well” is not clever, as anyone who has watched a relative or friend in the terminal stage of cancer will know.

Um, Tom, what’s happening with the chronology of your moderation? It’s like watching whack ‘a mole.

>> We can see the result of nasty nationalism in Norway of course. What a bunch of inward-looking trouble makers they are. Or Finland – another international pariah. Or those nasty Latvians – see how independence leads to evil, insular regimes!

Far be it from me to entertain attempts to crow-bar in unrelated third parties, but recent Latvian history is a *really* bad case to cite if you wish to present an image of racial harmony!

>> I don’t go out on the doorsteps to promote hate and fear – why would I?!

No, you’re on a blog making impenetrable comments.

From:

>> I give a positive account of Scotland and what we could achieve as an independent nation.

To:

>> It’s the unionist parties who say time and time again that we’re too small, weak and stupid to govern ourselves.

Yet again, can I ask what it is which combines “unionist parties” in minds such as yours? If you wish to present the world in terms of a historically aggrevied and benign homogenous mass known as “Scotland” against a malevolent homogenous mass known as “Unionism”, fair enough. It’s just that you cannot then claim to be progressive or non-sectarian.

Also, define time and time again. This wasn’t a bit of hyperbole, was it?

In fairnes Chris upon Thames Labour are telling lies.

Their campaign newspaper in Glasgow North East for example leads with a story which claims that the SNP wants to release 650 dangerous knife criminals from prison onto the streets.

This is a lie.

But so what? It is also a sign of desperation and I think we all know why.

And New Labour had no part in his release?

That’s as likely as the US not having been informed about it and giving their consent before hand.

Not that there’s a link between his release and Libyan oil deals. Or Libyan oil deals and the UK Gov paying for a high speed rail line to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Pure coincidence.

btw. The rail line hasn’t been confirmed that it is to be funded by the UK taxpayer yet. When it is I want full credit for starting this unfounded rumour.

Once again the ditherer was too slow, or didn’t want to act. Cameron makes him look like a chimp everytime something like this happens. Don’t blame Dave for deing good at his job, blame that useless sod you failed to get rid of.

It was because Chameleon and Clegg saw the likelihood that Labour would cop the blame that they refused to adopt a more just temporary method for parliamentary Expenses suggested by Gordon Brown shortly before the scandal broke.

People don’t tot up these things, but it is inevitable that the accumulation of such scunnering weighs on our views of his character.

No Tom. You’re wrong.

The Tories removed the whip from their naughty boy immediately (they tend to do that when one of theirs is having his collar felt. It’s like Kriptonite to the Conservatives). As of this morning the Westminster Three were still whipped members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and were getting legal advice from the Labour Party Solicitor. The fact that the great Ditherer had not got stuck in immediately is symptomatic of the vacuum of principle at number 10.

Cameron’s intervention gave voice to what the rest of us poor s*ds out here were thinking, and it’s got so much good coverage it’d be a brave yet nervous Secretary at number 10 who is ringing up ordering yet another box of Nokias this morning.

Oh yes, and the Labour Party are the very last people to be able to piously lecture about dirty tricks – we’ve still yet to learn the real truth about McBride (you know the man who Ed Balls “didn’t really know that well”…)

Heaven forfend that anyone should suggest that Chameleon – a PR man for Carlton TV for long years, and who went through Eton’s fagging system to be caught smoking dope – is a useless “sod”

“……….so long as he affects a tone of wounded outrage and indignation…….”

I think he does wounded outrage and indignation so well. I can picture him practising in the bathroom mirror before he decides which side to part his hair.

Bless!

There are many of the electorate who are wondering why several hundred more MPs are not going to be prosecuted.

“Apologies in the House” simply don’t cut it as justice, especially for (former) Ministers, and particularly when they are allowed to keep the ill-gotten gains.

Until MPs are subject to the same laws that they expect ordinary voters to comply with, they will all be open to accusations of hypocrisy.

All this proves, yet again, is that Labour just doesn’t get it when it comes to the expenses scandal. You think having a go at Cameron, like Harman earlier today, will somehow deflect the entirely justified wave of disgust felt by most people towards these individuals who think they can avoid the consequences of their actions by invoking Parliamentary Privilege. You are trying to suggest that Cameron’s criticism of Brown’s inability to act decisively when it comes to these matters (for it cannot be argued otherwise), is worthy of greater opprobrium than the three alleged fraudsters’ attempts to avoid prosecution for their crimes.

Whether it is sensible to comment on the individual cases before they go to trial is one thing. Declaring one’s disapproval of their cowardly attempts to avoid jail, and Brown’s pathetic response thereto, seems to me entirely reasonable.

Whilst it has long been New Labour strategy to shoot the messenger, in this case I’m afraid you have only succeeded in shooting yourself in the foot.

David Cameron took 86 mins to suspend Lord Hanningfield. Brown took 4,305 mins to suspend 3 Lab MP’s.

That’s a mere 50 times longer to save Parliament’s dignity…although I wonder whether this was after the Labour Party’s lawyers were finished advising them…who’s picking that bill up?

Why did your party not suspend the whip from these miscreants sooner than today? That is what has looked bad. Be careful also of guilt by association: it should be made clear to them that they ought to find a brief different from Labour.

Come on mate, you’re not even trying.

Quite so Tom; we out here also think it is great that they may be able to claim legal aid, and that they may get their redundancy package.

One rule for MPs, one for the rest of us.

Sick.

This is all part of the Tories very clever election strategy.

Ding (Dave I’m Not Gordon) is living up to his new name.

And yes I am frustrated that you can’t put a ciggy paper between the two of them on policy (or, in Ding’s case, lack there of)

“Cameron obviously believes that a narrative of “a plague on all your houses” might be converted to “this happened on Labour’s watch” ”

He can. The expenses scandal is part of the wider arguments about the general crapness of Parliament, the tip of the iceberg for want of a different cliche. Labour have done massive harm ‘on their watch’ and look nothing but stupid proposing changes like this after 12 years of empowering the executive.

@ Fruity

“Labour acts constitutionally, and in accordance with tested practice…”

…and THAT’s why you all sit around discussing points of order when action is required; why dithering has become the de-facto form of government and why Cameron will continue to run rings round you on issues like this. Bugger the constitution – you either move quick or you don’t move at all, with the result of eggy, constitutionally correct, faces all round.

You may was well discuss the form pages after the horse has run its race.

Thanks for the spelling advice on the fictional element too. Bloody useful.

Poor, p poor Stepney: By his abuse do we know him:

fruity |ˈfroōtē|
adjective ( fruitier , fruitiest )
1 (esp. of food or drink) of, resembling, or containing fruit : a light and fruity Beaujolais.
2 (of a voice or sound) mellow, deep, and rich : Jeff had a wonderfully fruity voice.
• Brit., informal sexually suggestive in content or style.
3 informal offensive relating to or associated with homosexuals.
4 informal eccentric or crazy : a kind of fruity professor.

Bring on the tumbrils and off with his “head”!

Tom you are trying to defend Brown by attacking Cameron. Why was Brown so late in removing the whip. that is the question you should be asking, but no just attack rather than debate.

@ Laudrup
“This drives me up the wall. Why on earth is it suddenly ok to comprimise the fairness of a criminal trial and since when did innocent until proven guilty go out the window. Absolutely disgusting from Cameron today.”

I see the Speaker has stepped in and warned all MPs to respeect sub judice.

Last week the head of the Office for National Statistics fingered Chris Grayling about misleading crime statistics, this week the Speaker of the House has to reprimand David Cameron for possible prejudice of criminal trials.

Party of lornorda’ anyone?

Tom. I think you’re cool.

Go, dude!

There is a theme linking this item with the previous one on Alastair Campbell, and that theme is Labour’s instinctive, tribal loyalty towards its own people. When one of your guys comes under attack from the outside, your party’s natural instinct is to circle the wagons, dig in and defend. This is in many ways admirable, but not when it becomes a case of ‘Party first, country nowhere’.

We have seen this repeatedly over the last 13 years. A minister is accused of wrongdoing, tribal loyalty kicks in, and a situation that could have been defused with a very short Prime Ministerial phone call ending in the words’ You’re fired’, instead gets dragged out into a three week saga in the papers, with more revelations every day until the unhappy minister finally succumbs to the inevitable.

Seen from outside the Labour Party, this is not a display of admirable loyalty and comradeship, but of ducking, diving and generally refusing to accept responsibility. It is one more factor eroding public trust in politicians. People, even MPs, are human and make mistakes: but those mistakes must be seen to have consequences for the individual MP, just as the voters know that if they screw up at work, bad things will happen to them.

The Labour Party is (for now) the governing party of the United Kingdom. Sorting out the expenses scandal is in the national interest. Yet Labour’s response has been akin to that of a shop steward trying to defend some union members accused of pilfering from the company. Cameron has had some political benefit from taking a lead on this issue: but for him, that is just a happy side-effect of doing the right thing.

Ignore them and they whinge, respond and they claim their silly tricks work.

Matters such as expenses and pay were ordinarily left to MPs to sort out in the tea room and so forth on a cross party basis while PMs would only intervene to restrain MPs’ pay pour encourager les sans culottes.

The “allowances” system unsurprisingly grew up under Mrs Thatcher, who, as ever, was more show than blow when it came to such matters.

I recall writing a letter to my local newspaper in 1983 shortly after the election when MPs’ office expenses system increased payments dramatically. It didn’t look like a slippery slope to deceit, but pretty soon that is what it became for many.

It has long been open to any MP to have his say on the state of affairs, which few could have been ignorant of.

I truly was surprised to see the maverick Tory “localist” and right winger Douglas Carswell MP, who has co-written a book (it says here on this £5 note) called “The Plan,” also having to repay money he claimed.

The culture was more nearly Mrs Thatcher’s than anyone else’s.

1 If you travel on busses you have failed
2 If you can get away with it then good luck.

@DickieH

Good shout. Once upon a time – even in the last government, ministers used to resign when they blunder. Now – well, it’s always someone else responsible, as in

“I take full responsibility for this, and have sacked the personal responsible”

Could be New Labour’s motto

The culture was more nearly Mrs Thatcher’s than anyone else’s. – QuietZapple———————————————————————–oh please…how do you manage to confuse the blatant dishonesty of people by blaming Margaret Thatcher.

if i steal from a shop should i blame my mum, my father or perhaps the local vicar?

these are grown up people who work in the top areas of this country governing us and making the rules that dictate our everyday existence.

are you telling me that in doing so they are not to be held responsible for the inability to get their expenses right or actually diddle the system knowing dam well they are doing it but should instead blame margaret thatcher.

no wonder our country is in the mess is in today…weak willed leadership that blames everyone else but itself.

this countries motto should now be “but it wasn’t my fault”

the reason none of these lying toadfaced (not you tom) crooks should ever be allowed to forget what they did is because it destroyed the trust that the electorate should be able to have in the people it elects….that will take years, may a generation to return.

you cannot tell me that the human conscience once tell any of them that applying for a bathplug, art insurance, duckhouses…wasnt anything but taking the preverbial Pish…..

these people just sicken me to the core of my stomach, they were dishonest, dam right dishonest and have hid behind their ability to control how they get away with it…i mean how can we just sit here and let people who have blatantly avoided capital gain taxes still sit in our goverment today?

it is us that is weak, to let these fools get away with it…because quietzapple i tell you what not for one minute would the inland revenue get of your back if you had done the same and there be no blaming thatcher for your mistakes either…

and people like Tom have to suffer this now, he has been tarred with the brush from these dishonest and undignified crooks.

you blame thatcher if you want i will blame the individual because thats who is at fault.

because their behaviour should never be forgotten….and then they try and claim that they need to re-invent parliament (the inherited prime ministers idea of changing the voting system)….

what absolute crap…that is not what caused this mess but somehow we are led to believe by changing it he is doing something about the mess

its laugh out loud madness and if cameron is throwing sticks lets hope his aim is right.

oh i have just burnt me tea…it was thatcher faults you know.

Tom

It did happen on your watch, or is that someone elses fault as well?

I agree with the concept, all politicians are suspect, but the buck has to stop somewhere. Perhaps you have all been snuffling for far too long, as that is what you seem to be saying. But thanks to some digging by journalists your house is now exposed. With out the journalists MPs would still be snuffling.

You told us you could be trusted and could run the country, it is called your watch and when it goes wrong on your watch, guess what? It is called responsibility, but perhaps with Parliamentary privelage, not too many of your colleagues understand.

[...] Tom Harris warns Cameron off throwing stones in glass houses. [...]