Tory MP: politicians treated like Jews by Nazis
David Wilshire, the disgraced Conservative MP, has compared the treatment of politicians over their expense claims to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany. Mr Wilshire, who was forced to resign after paying more than £100,000 in expenses to his own company, said the “witch hunt” against MPs “will undermine democracy”.
“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers,” he added. The Tory MP used his office expenses to write to all his constituents defending his claims and attacking The Daily Telegraph.
Voters in his Spelthorne constituency were surprised to receive a two-page letter, written on Commons notepaper and sent using taxpayer-funded pre-paid envelopes, in which he said that he was “devastated” at having to stand down.
David Nutt controversy: a warning to all you reefer kids out there
I am now of an age where people very rarely raise the topic of ‘joints’ in polite conversation. But if they do, I smugly tell them that my knees and elbows are in good nick, thank you, because I have been taking fish oil supplements for some time. Just to make doubly sure, glucosamine sulphate long ago replaced all possible rivals as my sulphate of choice.
But it wasn’t always like that, and therein lies the problem with Alan Johnson’s decision to sack Professor David Nutt as the government’s chief adviser on drugs, simply for pointing out that cannabis is less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco.
There are millions of adults – with perhaps hundreds of thousands sufficiently advanced in years to be in receipt of a pension – who know from direct personal experience that Prof Nutt is unquestionably right. It is indeed better to be a stoner than a lush.
ConHome threatens civil war with Cameron over EU
In anticipation of David Cameron’s u-turn on Lisbon, Tim Montgomerie has mounted what could charitably be described as a face-saving operation at ConHome, while trying to extract his own pound of flesh for the support.
He says:
Unless Vaclav Klaus u-turns again, the Lisbon Treaty is about to be ratified. The Conservative leadership will say that, if elected, there’ll be no attempt to ‘unratify’ it via a referendum. Lisbon is not the only problem in our relationship with the EU, goes the argument, and it would be a referendum that cannot undo Lisbon. I’m 99% certain of this position having worked the phones over the last 24 hours.
So far so unexpected. In fact Peter Oborne earlier predicted this with an article in the Observer: ‘Cameron has only himself to blame for this mess on Europe‘.
Tim Montgomerie then proceeds to counter expected criticisms with headers such as:
‘DAVID CAMERON PROMISED A REFERENDUM ON AN ‘UNRATIFIED’ LISBON TREATY, NOTHING ELSE’
and
‘DAVID CAMERON DESERVES THE CONTINUING SUPPORT OF EUROSCEPTICS’
and
‘THE NEXT CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT WILL SEEK A ‘MANIFESTO MANDATE’ FOR RENEGOTIATION’.
Again, so far so unexpected.
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Pics: Halloween protest on ‘Zombie Parliament’
On Friday over 60 campaigners dressed as undead politicians headed up Whitehall and past Downing Street to pay a visit to the “Parliament of the Living Dead.”
The ‘Zombie Walk’ was organised by Vote for a Change campaign, which is leading calls for a more accountable parliament with a referendum on the voting system.
Willie Sullivan from the Vote for a Change campaign said:
Some people may have noticed the smell round Westminster in the last few months. Our MPs, as if in a trance, are drawn by an unknown force to John Lewis’s. Instead of men and women with minds of their own we see mindless ghouls shambling through the Lobbies. We have elections in hundreds of safe seats where even a corpse could win a ‘job for life’. This is the Parliament of the Living Dead.
Westminster residents appear to be canvassing for a Second Job in George Romero’s latest movie. So this Halloween we decided to give MPs a treat – a visit from some rosette clad cadavers, who will be heading up Whitehall with a message that things need to change.
Our Undead Democracy needs a shot in the arm, and that starts with a referendum on fair votes. We need a parliament where voters’ voices are heard, and MPs are truly accountable – a parliament that’s quite simply better equipped to do its job, representing us, the voters.
The ‘Vote for a Change’ campaign is calling for a referendum on the voting system in the wake of the expenses crisis.
Photo credit: Anthony Upton/PA Wire
More here
From a press release
Parliament to hold first gay wedding
With its array of obscure procedures, archaic ceremonies and strictly enforced rules, Parliament has often struggled with a reputation as an institution stuck in a time warp.
But the hallowed halls of Westminster will take a major step into the 21st century next spring when the Palace defies convention to host its first ever civil partnership ceremony, The Independent can reveal.
Chris Bryant, the Europe minister, will become the first gay MP to have a civil partnership within the parliamentary estate in what will be seen as a symbolic victory for gay rights.
Despite his role in the historic event, the former Church of England chaplain said he was “just happy to be getting married” after becoming engaged to his partner, Jared Cranney. “Jared and I are engaged and we hope to have a civil partnership – or a marriage is what it feels like – in March of next year,” he said. “We’d like to do it in Parliament if possible.”
Mr Bryant met Jared, a company secretary, while out on the campaign trial in Soho with the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in April last year. The pair will now be working with the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, to finalise the details of the ceremony.
MacShane attacks William Hague with 10 questions
Yesterday Labour MP Denis MacShane sent an email to various hacks attacking Conservative MP William Hague and accused him of “laying down a smokescreen” over Tory allies in Europe.
He followed up with ten questions for William Hague and the Conservative Party over Europe. Having seen a copy of the email, we publish it here in full.
* * * * * * *
Subject: 10 Questions for Hague after his hysterical Mail on Sunday outburst
William Hague’s hysterical attack on David Miliband in the Mail on Sunday is a response to the damning criticism in the current Economist of the “shoddy, shameful alliance” the Comservatives have forged with the right of the right in east Europe
Hague also is laying down a smokescreen for reneging on Cameron’s referendum promise on the Lisbon Treaty. At a stroke the UKIP vote will surge as the Tories betray their referendum pledge. Hence all the Hague ranting on EU top jobs and now this attack on Miliband to divert attention from cameron’s failure to delay Lisbon and now the withdrawal of the plebiscite promise.
I have been watching Foreign secretaries and their shadows for 15 years. None has been so over-cited and demagogic as Hague. I wonder if Cameron dare keep him as For Second if Tories win?
But Hague’s over-excited argument still does not answer the following questions:
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How Goldman Sachs saw house crash coming
The US based McClatchy Newspapers have done an investigation into the role played by the big investment bank Goldman Sachs in the housing crash – which reverberated across the world.
In an investigative piece titled ‘How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash’, they revealed:
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.
The newspaper investigation also found that Goldman Sachs:
- Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they’d misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants’ incomes to justify making hefty loans.
- Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.
Dorries gives second daughter job at office
A controversial Tory MP at the centre of the expenses scandal has put a second daughter on the public payroll.
Shameless Nadine Dorries has handed just-graduated Jennifer an estimated £28,000-a-year taxpayer-funded job in her Commons office – weeks after complaining that the girl couldn’t find work.
MPs will be banned from employing family members under reforms following the expenses scandal. But Dorries, forced to apologise after revelations about her expenses, took on 22-year-old Jennifer before the new rules came in.
Eldest daughter Philippa, 24, has also previously worked for the Mid-Bedfordshire MP.
Prof. Nutt: Death by a bar chart
News update: Two govt advisors have now resigned in protest. Others considering the same ‘en masse’
* * * * * *
I don’t suppose there are many dignified ways of being sacked by your employer, but ‘Death By Bar Chart’ must be one of the least savoury ways to go. In his lecture to the Centre for Crime & Justice Studies, Professor David Nutt included this rather inconvenient illustration of the level of harm caused by a range of dangerous substances:
As you can see, Nutt’s table had alcohol and tobacco ranked as more harmful than a whole host of intoxicants, including cannabis, LSD and ecstacy. From this little illustration, a sprawl of tabloid stories was spawned and the government’s chief adviser on drugs had unconsciously secured his own sacking.
Given his stormy relationship with the Home Office, the sacking itself had an eye-rolling inevitability to it, but when you read the careful, methodical and rather unremarkable content of Nutt’s lecture, you’re really left wondering what all the bloody fuss was about.
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