1976 days ago
You may have missed it but Nick Clegg, once a hero of remainiacs like crazy cat woman Carol Cadwalladr yesterday spelled it out loud and clear – Brexit was not caused by Russian meddling and the Cambridge Analytica story is total tosh. Natch the crazy cat lady and her deluded followers dismissed poor Mr Clegg as a merchant of fake news. For them facts are an inconvenient truth, a bit like Carole’s self written life story.
2685 days ago
There is a strong contest to be the maddest and most extreme Brexit denier in public life. Normally Tory MP Anna Soubry is a strong contender, turning up on the BBC or C4 twice a day to offer up a few post fact era words to explain why she cannot accept the democratic will of the nation. But this week Soubry started to look positively sane when compared to two chaps who really are yesterday's men.
2797 days ago
Gina Miller, Nick Clegg, Tony the war criminal Blair, Michael "Brexiteers are Nazis " Heseltine. Apparently it is that they are silent. You might have thought that the BBC and C4 gave these folks every opportunity to yak on about what a disaster Brexit will be, but oh no, as the tweet below shows.
2954 days ago
God only help me but I am watching Nick Clegg on the Telly and I find myself agreeing with him. Not once but twice in ten minutes. This is a first and almost certainly a last.
2959 days ago
There is little doubt that Mr Ched Evans, the soccer player, is not exactly a role model for our era. But as of yesterday he is also a man who served a jail sentence for a rape of which he is not guilty. Now is the time when certain folks need to think very carefully about their actions and to say sorry.
3135 days ago
When neanderthal footballer Ched Evans was found guilty of rape back in 2012 it seemed to me that the evidence was wafer thin and that this was a miscarriage of justice as I noted after his release HERE. But after the verdict, it was clearly right he served time. However I was appalled that wankers like David Cameron and Nick Clegg sought to win votes by barring him from plying his trade after release which happened in October 2014.
Ched has indeed been unable to earn a living since his release but today his conviction has been quashed following new evidence and there will be a new trial. If Ched gets off he will be very angry about losing four years of earnings - given how short is a soccer players career. But he should be especially livid about how Cameron et al
3146 days ago
Nick Clegg, the name rings a bell, didn't he used to be an MP? Apparently he still is and today he sent me a strong email telling me why I must vote to stay in the EU. The last time I remember Nick Clegg telling me I had to vote urgently it was to stop tuition fees for students. Can anyone remember how that one played out?
This time Nick says that I must vote to stay in the EU to ensure we still have low cost air travel in Europe. Apparently if Britain leaves the EU the low cost airlines say that "routes will be cut" and "prices will skyrocket."
Really? Can Mr Clegg
3511 days ago
The bear raider Evil Knievil is of the opinion that The Tories should announce that jockey Tony McCoy be made a life peer before The Grand National for reasons that I do not quite understand. I assume that this is election pandering to the Upper Classes in the way that Nick Clegg tries to win the chav vote by taking a selfie with Joey Essex. But Knievil is not backing McCoy to win the National.
3604 days ago
I never thought I’d find myself writing in support of a convicted rapist but the footballer Ched Evans is at the centre of a witch-hunt egged on by vote seeking and spineless politicians which makes me feel rather ashamed to be British.
The transcript of the trial makes it clear that Mr Evans is a prize sleazebag. He insists that when he climbed into bed with his pal and a bird the pal had pulled, that the oral sex he offered to pleasure her with was at her invitation and that she consented to full sex thereafter. The next morning the victim bragged by text that she had bagged “a big one”. The next evening she reported Mr Evans and his pal for rape. The pal (who went first) got off, Evans served 30 months.
There is a very legitimate debate about the leniency of sentence. I would regard two and a half years for rape as shockingly light. However based on the court transcripts I am not convinced that I would have been able as a juror to have found Mr Evans guilty beyond all reasonable doubt of rape. Yes he is a sleazebag but a rapist? I am not so sure.
But he was convicted. He served his time and now he is out. Yet it seem as if the media and political establishment is determined that he never ply his trade again. He is not allowed to play abroad because he is on the Sex Offender’s register and when a UK club tries to sign him it faces such a barrage of hostility that it walks away. Nick Clegg was first to jump on this populist bandwagon.
David Cameron spouted some rubbish about how he could not take his son to watch a match in which Ched was playing. What utter nonsense. Posh Dave is a faux footie fan. A few weeks standing outside the posh seats at any club and he’d know from the chants that very few soccer players can be held up as role models. “Andy Carroll’s ‘avin a party, time to get the vodka and Charlie”
3840 days ago
Reading this morning’s press I am inundated with reports about the latest “UKIP car crashes” and the mainstream press now questions first whether UKIP will win Thursday’s poll and second, if it does win, how soon the bubble will pop. About the only person calling this right is Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
I write this as someone now almost 99% certain NOT to vote UKIP, more on that later.
The “car crashes” are in reality nothing of the sort. Some chap in Gloucester has made a comment about shooting a “pooftah” to get the others to turn straight, another fellow in Sussex seems to have an unusual degree of sympathy with the Third Reich and both are standing in the local elections for UKIP. So what, there are a few fruitcakes in UKIP. What’s new?
Nigel Farage was given a good duffing up in an LBC Radio interview. He lost his temper as did his PR man and he sounded a little less clear cut than usual. The interviewer ruffled him. But again so what? 99% of the population did not listen and since Farage was banging on (yet again) about immigration one suspects that his general theme probably played well with many anyway.
What Tim Stanley flags up is something those inside the political and media bubble in Westminster just do not appreciate. The great unwashed, that is you and I and the other plebs and peasants, are sick to the back teeth
3935 days ago
Perhaps the UKIP leader is a libertarian after all? You know that I regard his utterances on immigration as truly awful and UKIP’s economic policies do not stack up – scrapping foreign aid and ending EU contributions saves £16 billion. You cannot re-use that n times to spend, spend, spend and also cut the £100 billion deficit. But he has today written a brave and good piece in the Indy on drugs. Well done Nigel.
Farage starts with a long grumble about dirty tricks and the anti-democratic nature of by-elections. There is one looming on Thursday in some grim Northern shit hole and Labour won before it started by tying up the postal votes. The system does not work. I agree with Nigel. Moreover the contempt with which Labour regard the “poor” vote as its own is – as Nigel says – pretty lamentable.
But Farage’s more interesting point is on drugs. He writes:
Last week, Nick Clegg returned from a trip to South America. Goodness knows what he smoked out there, because he actually made a couple of smart points. First, the so-called War on Drugs isn’t working. Second, we should appoint a royal commission to look into the alternatives.
The fact is our current approach to drugs is neither practical nor effective. I strongly believe in promoting individual freedom – but I also strongly believe in reducing the public harm caused by drugs. As a parent as much as a politician, I say we have to accept that current policy has not achieved the reductions in crime or consumption that we’d hoped for. I know he slagged me off in this newspaper yesterday, but on this one I agree with Nick
Ends.
Come on Nigel (and Nick) you are almost there saying what all politicians know to be true but just cannot be brave enough to admit. Prohibition NEVER
4008 days ago
This is the last week when you will see Tom Winnifrith wearing his Movember tash.
To sponsor Tom’s efforts to raise money to fight prostate and testicular cancer go HERE.
This week’s theme is how the powerful in this case Nick Clegg and Wendy Deng’s friend Tony Blair) use the law to try to stop us finding out what they are up to in a way that we would not be able to do.
FOI applies only to little people.
This is so Orwellian.
4081 days ago
Oh worship the Money Tree, Bow down to the Great Money Tree. Nick Clegg you really are a prize git of the highest order. Your suggestions that all kids under 8 should get a free school meal might grub a few votes from the more innumerate members of the electorate but at every level it shows you for the fool and clown that you are and your party as an ideologically incoherent mess.
We start with the Money Tree basics. The UK is running a vast budget deficit and is heavily in debt. It cannot afford another £600 million. We are going bust. What do the Lib Dem’s not understand about that? Wake up to bankrupt Britain folks.
Aaaaaaah but what about the starving kids?
4141 days ago
To be honest I am a bit starved of ideas and the bird wants to head off for a romantic meal so the best that I can do on the caption front is to offer up a picture from earlier. Please post your wittiest captions in the comments section below.
4148 days ago
Have the MP's awarded themselves the pay rise they need to stop them stealing on expenses/retain the best talent? I have lost track. But nothing seems to change with the political classes. And so I read today that James Palumbo, the founder of the Ministry of Sound is to be made a Lib Dem peer having given the party £500,000 (or half a Bernie). Of coure all political parties play the same game and I am sure that this can be justified. After all his Dad is a Lord and what with cocaine being found in nine loos at the Houses of Parliament last week a night club boss will feel right at home there.
Anyhow please supply your captions for this picture in the comments section below.
For what it's worth my entries are:
"We are different from the old parties...we are here to change the corrupt established way of doing politics"
or
4160 days ago
Go back to bed and take an aspirin, I fear that I find myself agreeing 100% with Nick Clegg who for once shows himself as a true liberal. Meanwhile the Tory party nauseates me. The issue is tax breaks for married couples.
Call Me Dave has already pledged to hand out £150 a year in tax breaks to folks who opt to get married. But some of his more reactionary colleagues in Westminster (step forward Tim Loughton MP and Peter Bone) want the number to be £2,000. The Tory party is split on how much should be handed out to one section of society who have made a lifestyle choice of which they approve but they wish to use money paid for by every sort of taxpayer to fund those who follow this moral path.
Clegg may support Secret Courts, gagging the press and various other appallingly illiberal measures but on this one he is bang on the money. Government should never seek to use money taken from all sections of society to bribe people to follow one lifestyle course of which they approve purely on moral grounds.
If I suggested that there should be tax breaks for those men who frequented gay bathhouses to have sex with complete strangers you would think me mad.
4211 days ago
What a week. I feel that I have given David Cameron both barrels in the Tomograph and so what else to feature in this week’s caption contest? The retirement of that miserable old toad Sir Alex Fergie? Nope I have sworn to leave that alone since the mainstream media is obsessed by it? The looming bankruptcy of Spain? Prince Harry in the US? Nope it has to be the tragedy come comedy that is US Oil & Gas (USOP).
The prize for this week’s caption contest? Rather like the prize for owning USOP shares there is none. But feel free to post whatever caption you feel appropriate in the comments section below for this little picture.
For what it is worth my entry is
4219 days ago
It is so long since we ran a caption contest that I have forgotten what that caption was or who won. Let’s assume that it was the Evil son for simplicity’s sake. And so this week caption contest features that leader of the party whose candidate in Bridgewater South got zero votes on Thursday. Even the candidate herself could not bring herself to vote Lib Dem. Meanwhile in South Shields Nick Clegg’s party scored the worst by-election result for a major party (do the Lib Dem’s count as one?) since 1948. Across the land Beardy Weirdies with Orange rosettes were thrashed. As such I ask for captions to this picture.
For what it is worth my entry is:
Nick Clegg predicts the number of seats the Lib Dems will win at the next election…best case scenario
Or
Nick Clegg counts up the number of Lib Dem votes in Bridgewater but is out by ten.
Post your entries in the comments section below – deadline 9 AM Friday.
4220 days ago
As I sit at Bristol Temple Meads preparing to head up to London it is 8.30 AM and just 7 of 34 councils have declared the local results from last night. But already it is clear that the ONLY clear winner is UKIP. There is little doubt that Nigel Farage’s party will make further big gains from the other 27 counts and that it is a triumph. But does it mean much?
The results are pretty spectacular given that four years ago UKIP stood in few of these seats. In other words they have come from nowhere. As things stand UKIP is on 42 seats (level pegging with Labour) and a net 42 ahead. The Tories are 66 down, the Lib Dems 15 down and Labour 30 ahead. Where UKIP has stood it has averaged 27% of the vote and should gain c20% overall – well ahead of the Lib Dems and not far behind Labour.
So what does it mean? The easy calls first.
Together with its abject result in the South Shields by-election (the worst by a major party since 1948) the locals are a disaster for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. There will be yet more angry beardy weirdies
4239 days ago
The lefties wanted the tune from the Wizard of Oz to hit Number 1 as a way of celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher. It hit number 2 in case you care which I do not. The debate was should the BBC play it?
Cameron and Clegg said it was distasteful, shocking etc but that it was er..up to the BBC. They dodged the issue. Nigel Farage of UKIP said it was disgusting and disgraceful etc but as a believer in free speech, for him it was clear. If morons push this up the charts by buying it the BBC had to play The Witch is Dead.
You would have thought that as a liberal Cleggy would have stumbled on this obvious truth. But then again he likes Secret Courts and wants to gag the press. Call Me Dave is no believer in free speech but instinctively Farage gets it right. Thatcher would have approved.
At number six in the charts is “I am in love with Margaret Thatcher”. I like the sentiment but the tune is awful. If you can bear it listen here
It is not a patch on "I'm in love with Ann Coulter" which is a great song and we are all in love with Ann Coulter aren't we?
4255 days ago
Well anything is possible. The uber talented chanteuse Ms Cheryl Cole could be walking down my street right now to ask me out for a hot date. Frankly that is more likely than Labour losing a seat that has never been anything but Labour. But miracles can happen. Hang on… there is someone at the door.
Pizza delivery. Wrong address. Not Cheryl. Drat.
The results last time were Labour 52%, Tory 22%, Lib Dems 14%, BNP 7%, others (not including UKIP 5%). Following Rotherham and the national trends my assumptions would be:
Various others including the BNP and the Lib Dems get 10% between them. The Lib Dems will come somewhere between 5th and 8th on another night of abject humiliation for Nick Clegg. The BNP will not achieve much. At least Clegg’s memory these days seems to be so poor when it comes to hearing painful news (Rennard, Huhne, Hancock) that he will soon be able to forget about leading his party to another electoral caning.
The Tory vote will slump. Call Me Dave has done his utmost to piss off traditional Tories (I am amazed that there were so many in South Shields, wherever it is, last time) and voters will tactically switch to the best placed party that might just run Labour close, i.e. UKIP. The Tories will get 10% of the vote ( + or – 3%). I suspect the – is more likely than the + - it will be a dire night for Call Me Dave as May 2nd also sees local elections in which the Tories will get thrashed. There will be stacks of very angry ex Tory councillors on May 3rd.
And so on the face of it, if the Labour vote held steady then that would see UKIP on 30% and Labour on 52%. But….
South Shields looks to be the sort of grim Northern shit hole that Labour takes for granted. Its voters there are working class and one suspects that their views on immigration, Europe and a range of other issues are not exactly the sort aired by Ed Miliband and his pals at Islington dinner parties. Besides which this by election is caused by Dave Miliband pissing off to New York to earn loads of wonga. Talk about treating your poor constituents with contempt. That makes the circumstances a touch unusual.
And so my guess is that there will be some shift from Labour to UKIP (as there was in Rotherham and Eastleigh) and also from Labour to “not voting at all as you are all wankers.”
UKIP has nothing to lose here. If it gets 30% and comes second (from nowhere) that is a triumph. But I have a sneaking feeling that it could do rather better than that. It is currently 17-1 to win and I am tempted to have a tiny flutter. Anything is possible. Hang on... is that the doorbell I hear ringing again?
4266 days ago
Today the three party leaders will sit down and agree to ever tighter controls on the press. Assuming that he is not getting a blow job from a hooker at the time, Hugh Grant will then invoke the name of Milly Dowler and a 300 year tradition of a free press will draw to a close.
If you trust your politicians to behave with honesty and integrity that is perhaps fine. If you are happy for celebs like Grant to give you the hard sell on their latest movies or useless designer products without knowing why their public image is a sham that is again fine. If you are happy for scandals involving taxpayers cash being wasted, paedophile rings run within local councils and at the BBC to stay hidden and protected, then that is fine.
I suspect that none of us are happy that scandal and corruption will now become harder to expose. I am not.
The established press has done itself no favours. Phone hacking was a disgrace. It was also illegal under existing laws. There is no need for a new law to (in due course) get the collar of Piers Moron and others felt. And the press/Westminster cosy club
4267 days ago
Cyprus has become the fifth Eurozone nation to get a bailout but this one is different. At the insistence of the Germans one condition of the bailout is that private citizen’s pay and they will do so via a tax of up to 10% levied on all bank deposits in the Mediterranean island. This is pure socialism in action – the idea that the legitimate savings made by an individual as a result of fully taxed income can just be seized by the State. It is a horrific precedent.
For having established that the State can effectively seize whatever it wants whenever it wants you rather accept that you have no private property or savings. You can work your socks off, pay taxes to support those who do not work, save prudently so that you will not be a burden on the State or your family in the future and then one day the State just seizes your money. Heck why stop at 10% of bank deposits? Why not seize land, houses, etc.? The precedent is now there and this is an EU precedent.
David Cameron wishes to remain part of an organisation which thinks that State sponsored theft of private wealth is acceptable. I do not and nor, I suspect, do most British people. If the Conservative party and for that matter the Lib Dems and Labour support State sponsored theft that is fine they should be honest about it and we can all vote UKIP. But will the established parties stand up to the political elite in the Evil Empire and say
4273 days ago
If he was not such a sanctimonious git who has been wrong on every issue of the past 15 years and if his wife was not such a revolting piece of work you might feel a shred of sympathy for Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce as they each prepare for an eight month stretch. As it happens, like 99% of the population I delight in the downfall of this ghastly couple who typify all that is so revolting about the political class. And it seems that twitter agrees...
@sixthformpoet
I wonder if Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce are one of those annoying couples who finish each other's sentences.
@GuidoFawkes
Cruel and inhumane >> @nedsimons: Lembit Opik telling BBC News he will happily visit Chris Huhne in jail.
@doctorcfd
One last thought about #Huhne - when Clegg was elected over him, was the party merely picking the lesser of two weasels?
@EUMegaraid
#Huhne and #Pryce symptomatic of endemic political criminality Let's just turn Parliament into a Category A jail and be done with it
@Kwaitie
No Nick Clegg, a personal family tragedy is your child being hit by a speeding motorist & nearest A&E is miles away due to NHS cuts #Huhne
@DommieWobble
bet chris #huhne thought his ex's had stayed this way ....fun boy 3 - our lips are sealed http://youtu.be/IYS5tPou2s0
@GavBillenness
Breaking news: #Huhne tries to make Vicky Pryce take his 8 months for him
@DCamoron
#Huhne learned the hard way not to give penalty points to your wife! I'm not that stupid, I make sure #Clegg takes mine!
@AndreTheViking
Breaking News: #huhne to appeal sentence. Requests that his wife picks up the soap in the showers for him.
@fnordleblanket
Sentenced to 8 months isn't so bad. It's been ten years since #Pryce and #Huhne have gone down together.
@Brendan_Surrey
The ultimate punishment would be to be denied PR. To have to beg for a slave labour job at a Job Centre just like the rest of us. #huhne
@MrsStuffandGuff
@Scarletstand Thank god one of them didn't pen a facebook status vaguely threatening something vague, or they would've got longer. #huhne
4274 days ago
I am not sure what the Lib Dems are meant to stand for these days and in a couple of years’ time they will be an electoral irrelevancy anyway. But I always thought that a party with the word Liberal in its name might have some sort of core beliefs in the liberty of the citizen against an all-powerful state. Unless I have read my John Stuart Mill very incorrectly I think that should be the case.
However, under current plans which the Lib Dems in parliament have largely supported, the law will change to extend secret hearings across the civil justice system. In a secret hearing defendants or claimants will not be allowed to be present, know or challenge the case against them and must be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer. Right now these procedures are used in tiny numbers of immigration and deportation hearings, but the Government wants to extend them across the civil courts in cases deemed to involve national security.
Now, I am sure you can spot the flaw in this proposal. It is the State that decides when the security of the State is threatened. In a country where burning a poppy on twitter and where calling a police horse “gay” have both been deemed by the State to be offences, I simply do not trust the State.
That may trivialise the point. What about the whistleblower? The David Kelly figure. As the law stands now he is just murdered in the woods, sorry I meant allowed a public trial if charged. But as the law may stand in future someone who exposed how a crazed leader started an illegal war with a pack of lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction
4283 days ago
There is only one story this week: when did Nick Clegg know that his leading party official not only looked like Jabba The Hut but, allegedly, shared his views on career advancement for women.
My caption for this one is: So Princess Leia how would you like to be a Lib Dem MP?
And so in honour of this episode and to win a Chris Huhne Liar! Criminal! T-shirt I ask you for captions to the picture below.
For what it is worth my caption is
“Salesman: Sir, If you want to fit in the entire Parliamentary Lib Dem party after 2015 you will need to buy the 4 seat model”
Or alternatively:
“Chris wanted you to look after his car whilst he is off the road and says do not worry about speed cameras he knows a sure fire way to get around the system””
If you can do better post your entries in the comments section below.
Last week I asked you for captions for this picture of the Horse belonging to queen welfare scrounger Heather Frost .
4286 days ago
One runs a tinpot organisation and issues a press release saying that measures taken by his organisation “continue to deliver production growth” at a time when production had fallen sharply for the prior two months and one runs a tinpot organisation and says that he had not heard of allegations that his party CEO was a serial sex pest until last week. Oh dear. Breaking News: It seems that one of his own former MPs (Sandra Gidley) has now gone on the record saying she told Clegg all back in 2007.
In for a penny in for a pound. Ellerton (or rather his grateful shareholders) is suing me for libel for calling his statement about production growing (when it was in fact falling) “deliberately misleading.” I really am not quaking in my boots about defending that one and cannot wait to get JimBob to explain himself on the witness stand.
Now that I am getting the hang of being sued for libel for pointing out the bleeding obvious, here we go again: Clegg, I think your statements about your knowledge of sexpest-gate are deliberately misleading too.
What’s the difference between Jim Ellerton and Nick Clegg? Unlike Clegg, Jim Ellerton has at least some chance of being leader of the Lib Dems after the next election.
4288 days ago
The Lib Dems are still likely to win Eastleigh. If they do not, given that every councillor there is a Lib Dem and it is a Lib Dem seat then Nick Clegg is in deep trouble. It may well be that the cover-up over the Lord Rennard sex scandal is only a secondary worry although that will get very nasty as well. But at 11/2 UKIP is now worth a flutter. Think the unthinkable: UKIP might just win the by-election caused by Chris Huhne’s imminent fast track to prison.
A Populus poll shows Lib Dem 33%, Con 28% UKIP 21% ( but surging). However that assumes that undecided voters are reallocated on the basis of how the seat voted at the last General Election. That was a whole different ball game. Without that fiddle it is 31 (sex pest party), 26% ( hopeless party of Government), 25% UKIP.
Labour are on the low to mid teens and since the Labour candidate ( the one who supported the Argies in 1982 and wanted the IRA to kill Thatcher) is a prize loon, his vote could well slide far further. Labour voters in Eastleigh are not bourgeois Islington lefties who think the UKIP are unspeakably horrid but traditional working class voters who believe in hard work and have no truck with the EU, unrestricted Romanian immigration etc. They really should vote UKIP anyway and if they see UKIP as a chance to kick the wicked coalition in the goolies they may well switch. No: they are switching it is just a matter of how many more come over in the final few days.
If UKIP can pick up a few more percentage points from Labour ( and it is gaining support from all three parties) then life gets very interesting. It is hard to see the Lib Dem vote hardening in the final few days as the sex scandal widens and deepens and nothing the hopeless Government does these days does anything to attract those who should be core Tory voters. If it is anything the Tory party is meant to be the one that gets the economy right. And on Friday the UK lost its AAA rating as the credit agencies finally twigged that UK public finances are a mess and that things are not getting better.
A separate Survation phone poll has it as: Con 33, Lib Dem 29, UKIP 21, Lab 13 but again if you do not do the reallocation fiddle UKIP is up on 25 with this time the sex pests in second on 26, and the Tories on 29. The same arguments apply here. It is abundantly clear that this contest is a three way battle. Labour support is slipping steadily ( all to UKIP) and Nigel Farage et al must also think that in the next few days they can also pick up Lib Dems and Tories as well.
It will not change the world, but a UKIP win would be disastrous news for both Call Me Dave ( giving credibility to a party which believes in the sort of things the Tory party once believed in) and also for Clegg in that if the safest Lib Dem seat in England is lost what hope does his party have of avoiding electoral wipe-out in 2015.
At 11/2 it is worth a flutter. It might just happen.
And as I noted before, a UKIP vote is in fact the ONLY sane and honourable vote in Eastleigh. .
4304 days ago
More details emerge about liar, criminal and ex MP Chris Huhne every day which are guaranteed to nauseate. The windfarm and global warming nutter made his ex wife have an abortion for the sake of his career (she says) and there was a mistress prior to the lesbian he hooked up with before ditching the ex Mrs Huhne. This is all pretty unpleasant but is a private matter. What matters is the money.
Multi millionaire Huhne always played the expenses game aggressively – claiming for the cost of a Trouser Press amongst other things. And days before quitting as an MP – when he knew that the game was almost up – he happily claimed for an Ipad (at £700) and stiffed the taxpayer with an expenses claim. Various of his smug colleagues demand he repay that sum to deflect from the real question: why the hell does an MP need an Ipad anyway and why the hell should the taxpayer pay for it?
How many other sleazy MPs have bought an Ipad and put it on expenses?
The real kick in the groin for the taxpayer is that Huhne will get a £70,000 payoff for standing down as an MP.
4308 days ago
As Chris Huhne MP (pro tem) prepares to leave the house of commons to spend some time an another institution full of liars and thieves ( so no change there), twitter erupts into a volley of abuse. Here’s the best
@gabrielquotes
#Huhne has been driven out of office by this scandal. Or did he drive himself?
@jetboyfantastic
Vicky Pryce was furious about Trimingham now she’s pleased #Huhne is doing some bird.
@GarionTweets
Today is a good day to bury bad #Huhne’s..
@pperrin
Clegg ‘I am shocked and saddned that Chris #Huhne has admitted criminaly perverting the course of justice – he should have kept lying’
@CaptainRanty
“Miss Pryce is using an archaic defence called ‘marital coercion’ ‘ So can I use the same thing to get out of shopping?
4372 days ago
The Daily Mail carries a piece today alleging that a key aide to deputy PM Nick Clegg personally intervened to get £12 million of taxpayers cash fast tracked to a charity ( BookTrust) of which Mr Clegg’s wife is a prominent supporter. Apparently emails have just emerged showing that while other charities must bid for Government cash, this one just got it. Hmmm.
The piece manages to find a rent-a-quote Tory and Labour MP to demand an enquiry. Oh, another one. An enquiry a day, hip hip hooray, more money to pay, what more can I say? Do politicians ever do anything in life apart from call for enquiries? Personally I do not see why taxpayer’s cash in Bankrupt Britain is handed to charities at all. Booktrust may do great work but it a fake charity. It is now an arm of Government. That to me is a scandal.
As for Cleggy I ask you one question:
4374 days ago
UKIP was never going to win any of the three by-elections last night. The mainstream press knew that but happily suggested it might in order that the political and media establishment in the Westminster bubble could say that UKIP had not done as well as expected. UKIP is not a party of the establishment and it will thus get no favours from the established media. The way that papers such as the Telegraph took the spin from the established parties is the sort of dirty trick UKIP will have to get used to as it grows. And it will grow.
I write this not as a UKIP member or indeed committed supporter. Pro tem I am clearly a sympathiser. I think that the party has a good few loons in its ranks. Don’t they all? It strikes me that it can appear not to be libertarian at times on social issues. That may be unfair on it, but it is the impression one gets. However on a range of issues, notably the EU, smoking in public places and deficit reduction it is, for me, bang on the money. And though it wants to have MPs, right now it has nothing to do with the sleaze club of Westminster to which the other three main parties all belong.
4375 days ago
So the Leveson Report is out. And it is pretty grim reading. It will delight Hugh Grant, Max Mosley, Nick Clegg and the other illiberal folk who want the press muzzled. It will delight the political elite who resent their sins being revealed. And it will, I suspect, hasten the demise of the traditional newspaper industry.
Leveson proposes legislation which will see a body containing no MPs or journalists but a fine body of establishment grandees there to ensure that newspapers do not breach certain rules. If they do they will face crippling fines Ofcom will review how this body works every two years. The information Commissioner will be given greater powers to prosecute newspapers for breaches of data protection.
Hmmm. Ultimately who appoints these independent grandees…politicians. David Davies MP (the man who should have led the Tories rather than Call Me Dave) is spot on:
4388 days ago
An IPSOS Mori poll out yesterday shows that 48% of Britons agree with Call Me Dave that the EU budget should rise only to match inflation. 31% want the EU budget to be cut. But 14% want it increased in real terms.
Cripes. As you walk down the street today be warned that 1 in 7 of those you pass are certifiably mad. They want to hand over more money Britain does not have to the Evil Empire. I wonder what percentage of our fellow citizens believe in the tooth fairy. Or in Santa Claus. Presumably the same sort of headcases. About 14%. How many believe in Nick Clegg’s promises? You are aving a larf. No-one can be that mad surely?
4439 days ago
Life is pretty grim when Nick Clegg is the party leader who is closest to getting it right on benefits. But well done to him for saying that rich pensioners should not get free TV licenses, bus passes and winter fuel allowances. Of course he does not go far enough but it is a start.
Just a reminder. The UK will have the biggest budget deficit in the EU next year. For all the talk of wicked Tory cuts we are hurtling towards a situation where our state finances are in a worse state than those of Spain, France, Italy etc.
4441 days ago
I am sure that Gladstone and John Stuart Mill would be terribly impressed at the dynamic policy initiatives dreamt up this week by the Lib Dems. Actually I have not watched any of the Lib Dem conference and I suspect that neither has anyone else. A party that faces electoral obliteration discussing dull as ditchwater policies that will never be implemented cannot hope to compete in terms of TV time with catching up on missed episodes of the new series of Dallas. Nick Clegg you are no Bobby Ewing although I hear that after lunch Charles Kennedy can do a good impression of Digger Barnes.
I have, however, picked up on the news that the Lib Dems plan to reconnect with the public with dynamic policy initiatives to impose taxes on plastic bags and fizzy drinks. Heck, I bet that’s got Ed Milliband running scared. While it is easy to dismiss these plans as irrelevant I fear that they are not as they are exactly the sort of things that all three of the mainstream parties (plus the Greens) agree on and as such are bound to become law. The problem in both cases is that such laws are regressive (i.e. they stuff the poor) and also illiberal.
4445 days ago
No new laws have been passed in Parliament but the law has changed says Nick Clegg to allow the State to dictate how you and your partner behave in a relationship. You can now face criminal charges for stopping your wife/partner/husband from opening a bank account or stopper her/him seeing friends and family – this is a crime known as “coercive control.” It has been welcomed by the usual bunch of big state losers in the Labour party, the BBC etc but it is actually very sinister.
For a start it has not actually been brought into being as a result of legislative change.
4467 days ago
Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems and Deputy PM yesterday called for a new “Wealth Tax” so that wicked rich people could “make an extra contribution” during the economic downturn. In an interview with the Guardian, he links his call with the word “fair.” Hmmm. Mad, innumerate or just desperate?
I note that Clegg has not actually put forward a concrete proposal just a general idea. As such it can be dismissed as pre-conference grandstanding and the chances of anything actually happening are pretty much zero. But hypothetically let us humour the guy and assume that it did. Would it a) assist the economy, b) strengthen Government finances or c) be fair? The answer is no on all three counts. As such Clegg is at best economically illiterate and at worst just plain mad. Or perhaps this is a desperate gambit to win back lost voters?
To the economy first. Folks acquire wealth by various means.
