And another thing…

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)

Stepney must have fallen under the spell of the misspelt kryptonite, for his mighty argument falls thus:

Labour acts constitutionally, and in accordance with tested practice, hence the three Labour MPs who have now been suspended were the subject of discussion between the Chief Whip and others before the decision was taken.

The public have become increasingly tired of Mr Chameleon’s PR bites. The hapless Tory party will fall by his only strength being shown to be dross.

I wonder whether his intention to censor tweets and other of his PPCs’ comms runs to staffers at CCHQ?

Well, “Stepney”?

There’s a few things that stand out in this matter. Brown has not removed the whip from these MPs. Brown has not come out and stated that they should not be able to hide behind parliamentary privilege. The Labour party’s solicitor is advising the MPs in question.

And do you think that if found guilty, they should keep there “redundancy” payout, and all other benefits? If you don’t, will you do anything about it?

Mick Anderson: These 4 are the first tranche, more may follow.

The police and CPS would presumably like to see these in court before they investigate and perhaps prosecute more, resources always being short in the public sector.

Whether they will wait until there are convictions, as there may be, is another matter.

I seem to recall that legal opinions are expensive, and that few capable, professional and non tendentious ones are given free on the net.

I wonder if that information is new to many whose posts here echo David Chameleon’s inept statements, which, as Harriet Harman suggests, may prejudice fair trials, and so any convictions which may be just.

Justice! There’s a word!

How foul are the cries for Liberty! in the throats of the witless vengeful?

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.

The Fact Compiler’s right, Dave doesn’t have to worry too much as long as he’s not Brown.

A shallow but effective strategy. Personally I won’t be voting for either of two major parties, though given the choice I would prefer Cameron to Brown as Prime Minister – but that’s rather like saying I prefer to be hit by a car doing 30mph than one doing 35mph.

@Laudrup Monday 8 February 2010 at 12:40 pm

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
//

Since Lisbon. That’s Napoleonic Law for you.

@Quietzapple Monday 8 February 2010 at 12:36 pm

The police and CPS would presumably like to see these in court before they investigate and perhaps prosecute more, resources always being short in the public sector.

Yeah, right.

“it is a legal one to be decided by the courts, one that must be taken in accordance with statute as it existed at the time of the alleged offences.”

Nice if this applied to the rest of us. Will you tell Gordon to stop implementing retrospective legislation, it is completely immoral and should be illegal.

“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”!

Dithering/Labour Party Constitution update:

“Where standards are transgressed and mistakes are made, we have got to take action.

“That is why we have suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party Elliot Morley because of the allegations, which are serious, which have been made against him. Where there is irregularity, it has got to be dealt with immediately*.”

G. Brown. May 14th 2009.

* “immediately” = about 35 weeks.

There’s no mistaking the Labour party apparatus for a speeding bullet that’s for sure….

@ Stepney

“Bugger the constitution – you either move quick or you don’t move at all, with the result of eggy, constitutionally correct, faces all round.”

Yes. Just do without the constitution, or indeed any laws that get in the way of decisive and cavalier action, such as that taken by bold David Cameron, PM in waiting.

Getting a good headline, accusing your opponent of protectionism, making pretty strong personal attacks in public that had been previously well publicised in order to get them into the morning media, sounding dead, dead tough, is much more important than following proper procedures that are designed to ensure fairness. After all, no-one has actually been convicted yet.

But then, we’re coming to see how very good Dave is at reacting to events in a way that will show him in the best possible light. He’s not quite so good at the “vision” thing. Plenty of mirages that fade away the nearer you get to them.

Constitutional procedures or kangaroo court?

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: You’re the expert Whovian, can you explain to Stepney that there haven’t been 35 weeks since the CPS announced its prosecutions? Labour disciplined the three MPs for a second time today.

And that Lord Hanningfield seems to have escaped any sanction 35 weeks ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Hanningfield

In fact he continued in several important paid roles the while.

Looks like another case of Chameleon claiming to have acted with droit de seigneur when the gent had already removed himself. We had a few of those over the first tranche of expenses victims.

Soo masterful! LOL!

Oh come on Tom Cameron has been Banging on for years about BROKEN Westminster. Why he mentioned it in his maiden speech (well he could of)

anybody might think Cameron has only just become a late convert to the wicked MP syndrome and is just after a few votes.

after all it only took him 9 years to come to his Epiphany

No need for an explanation, though thanks awfully for the offer.

Cages have been sufficiently rattled today; a masterpiece of timing.

Expect more.

“HAS DAVID Cameron or his advisers ever stopped to ask themselves why, exactly, he’s not seen as a trustworthy person by a large number of voters?”

The last poll I saw showed Cameron’s approval ratings in the positive at about + 29. Brown was negative at about – 35….. and that was an improvement!

The fact is Cameron has reacted much better to public anger about the expenses-fiddling MPs and Brown has dithered and been on the back foot all the way along. The latest example being the 3 Labour MPs who are being prosecuted. Why didn’t Brown remove the Whip the minute the DPP confirmed that they were being charged? It’s not like he hadn’t had plenty of time to prepare for the possibility!

Instead Brown did it minutes before Cameron spoke, knowing that Cameron was going to denounce his dithering. Once again, Brown looks like the one trying to defend the indefensible. What’s he proposing instead of proper reform … at the last minute introducing a Bill on AV which no-one wants – except Brown because it will swing the electoral bias even more towards Labour.

And you say Cameron is seen as untrustworthy!

oh tom…i am so disappointed with you.

first you tell us how wonderful alistair campbell is (david kellys family may argue with that one…no thats not libellous just a bit of hearsay)

now you are saying that david cameron is just making political capital out of the 3 labour mps (not enough of them if you ask me) not being suspended quickly enough and brown (the inherited prime minister) not doing enough to stand up to it….

well i cant be bothered to respond to the alistair campbell bit…he was never voted into parliament by the british public; so what on earth was he doing putting together a dossier to go to war with iraq in the first place!

as for cameron you seem to think he did it because of some lowering opinion polls and a couple of bad pmqs…

are you therefore suggesting the british public base all of their decisions on whatever happens in a half an hour slot once a week on tv (most of us are at work then anyway) and then we all tell you what we think by giving our voting intentions to polls that people seem never to have answered to in the first place.

no we dont…brown is a gonna and of that there is no doubt.

thank god cameron stood up and told us all what we really think…yes his party are just as bad but your party is supposed to represent the working man/woman of this country and yet you have people in your party who were so tight fisted they were claiming for bath plugs…hardly something that is akin to the working man/woman.

as for desperate tactics and glasshouses…damien mcbride anyone?

disappointed tom thought you were cooler than this…

Tom. I think you’re cool.

Go, dude!

Anyone know if these MPs plus a Lord have had their DNA taken and logged on the database yet?

Mug shots or fingerprints taken yet?

If not, why not?
Another case of the law not being applied equally?

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. [...]