The dark side of Labour and Parliament.

UK politicians are generally held in low esteem by the public.  It takes a lot to dislodge Estate Agents and Lawyers from the title but MPs and councilors are now competing against tabloid journalists for the dubious title of least trusted 'professions' .

Even with issues like Plebgate, the police are still viewed more favourably than politicians.  Imagine, the police stitch-up a senior member of the coalition-leading Conservative party and yet they are still considered to be 'better' than politicians!

The latest revelations to surface relate to the Labour party and concern the recently former chairman of the Cooperative Bank and his affinity with drugs and seemingly 'having inappropriate gay porn images on his council provided computer'. 

The Labour party has surpassed itself in the way it is trying to distance itself from Paul Flowers, the Methodist minister that they allowed to be appointed as chairman of the Cooperative Bank.  When Flowers was appointed, he was somehow found to be a 'fit and proper person' despite being previously convicted for drink driving and gross indecency.     This is the same bank that developed a £1.5billion hole in its balance sheet, under Flowers' watch, following the acquisition of the Britania Building Society.  The same bank and organization that, like the unions, provides funding to the Labour party (any connection, one wonders).  In the case of the Cooperative Group this includes funding, via direct payments to the tune of at least £50,000, the office of Ed Balls, the Labour Shadow Chancellor and, through providing a significant overdraft of £3.9 million to the party at what are reportedly 'unusually generous terms'.

Given all that Labour has received from the Co-op, you would maybe expect a bit of loyalty but no.  Damage limitation is the name of the game and so Paul Flowers and the Co-op are thrown to the wolves.  The Cooperative Bank has now been rescued by the darlings of the left, the hedge funds!

In typical Labour fashion, they claim that any inference that they closed their eyes to Flowers' appointment is a smear tactic used by political opponents.  This is the same tactic that is used by all so called 'progressives' whenever their policies or actions are questioned.  Want to talk about immigration?  You must be a racist!  Did you mention homosexuality?  You are a homophobe!  One can never question the integrity of a Labour politician because they are, 'well you know a straight kind of guy' party.

Make no mistake, just as with the scandal at Falkirk, where the Unite union (Labour's biggest financial backer) tried to pack the selection process with union paid members, this Co-op scandal will further stain the Labour party.

However, the Labour party led by Ed Miliband (one of whose 'business advisors was the same Paul Flowers!) are not alone in dragging politics into the gutter (or a place lower than the gutter (House of Commons?)).

 We have also heard, in recent weeks of Nadhim Zahawi MP, of the Conservative party,  who claimed £5,882 for energy bills, seemingly to, in part, heat his stables.

We have Dennis McShane, former Labour minister, who has admitted expenses fraud.

Chris Huhne the darling of the left in the Liberal party and proponent of crackpot 'green policies' was jailed earlier this year for perverting the course of justice.

The list goes on and on.

There are some honest politicians with integrity - lest I be accused of anti-Labour bias, Dennis Skinner and Frank Field immediately spring to mind - but one gets the distinct impression that they are in the minority.  That is likely not fair but that is the impression.  Time and again we have stories where it is apparent that for many MPs, the sole purpose of being in parliament, is to milk the system for all you can, and in some cases, for a bit more, if you can get away with it.

I can't think of a stronger word than venal but I'm open to non-foul-mouthed suggestions!

So I have had a rant but honestly can't think how the position can be changed.  Ed Miliband and Labour are so dependent upon vested interest funding from the unions that, even if they wanted to clean house, they simply couldn't.  The Lib Dems must be treated with suspicion because their solution would lead to state funding of political parties.  The Conservatives?  Many Conservatives, from David Cameron on down, seem to just think that being in government is it.  Policies and integrity, who needs them, we have 'red boxes'!

What a sorry state in which we find British politics! 

Miliband's numbers

Charitably speaking, it must have been the fear. 

There was Ed Miliband sitting in his suite in Brighton, preparing his 'leader's' speech.  He knew he had successfully overcome the Neil Kinnock moment.  He had managed to successfully walk on the beach, while being photographed and hadn't fallen over!  But............

He also knew that Damian McBride, was publishing and promoting his memoirs.  If these were to be full and candid, what tales of complicity might they tell?   How might Rasputin's henchman implicate him.  Ed knows it doesn't have to be true, just said or whispered.  What a worry.

How is the Leader to plan for the post-2015 election turnip harvest, which will be a record, he already knows, if he is being bothered about these kind of things?

So, in pops a speechwriter with the latest draft.  The speech-writing aide is also worried.  Putting the knife into brother David's back, seemed the best thing at the time and certainly Len and the other big money-guys all supported it but look at the polls!  It's not as if becoming a writer for the Guardian is an option.  They are suffering losses, especially now that all that government jobs advertising revenue has dried-up!

So between them, they come up with a wheeze.  Let's promise to freeze energy prices!  At a stroke, Labour's ratings will soar and with them, Ed's.  For how long will we freeze them, someone asks.  4Ever, aide Owen, stridently says.  "This is just the start, food prices have been rising as well, so let's freeze them, too!  And let's be balanced, so abandon the fascist Tory freeze on council tax rises, after all, we don't want to frighten the vicar!"

In a resurgence of fratricidal-like vigor, Ed says No!  We will freeze for 22 months!  I have it on good authority that within 22 months of the establishment of our Socialist utopia, we will be able to produce sufficient quantities of both left and right foot clogs for the masses to wear.  This will keep them happy, when the freeze ends!

Perhaps it didn't happen quite like this but ...............

Miliband knows better than most that the more significant part of average energy bills is represented by environmental taxes - more than 10% of the cost.  Then there is VAT at around 6%.  The profit element comes in at less than 5% (and don't forget that this profit has also been taxed and any subsequent dividends paid, will be taxed!).

Miliband knows because it was he, as the minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, during the last Labour mis-government, that brought in the legislation that imposes such punitive (and futile) green taxes. 

I guess you can take the minister out of power but you can't take the spin and mendacity out of the minister?

Oh, and related to the above and before anyone bothers to question the futility of these green taxes.  Tell me, how can scientists be 95% certain that global warming is man-made? 

Firstly, their own evidence (embarrassingly) doesn't actually show any sustained warming unless they slice-up the data to fit the required answer - so from June 22nd 2013 through July 5th 2013, temperatures rose at an alarming rate and the freezer at Blackpool's Iceland store was unable to cope and the internal ice-caps started to melt - ergo man-made global warming!

Secondly, what kind of science is it that is 95% certain?  Can you be 95% dead?  95% pregnant?  Can we be 95% certain that the tensile strength of an object is X?  How was this 95% figure derived?  Using some kind of probability analysis, maybe?  Given that the data used by the IPCC and their fellow green-gravy-train travelers, has been found to be almost completely flawed, wrong and sometimes just plain manufactured, one would have to take any such analysis with mountains of salt!

I am not a scientist but recall from my schooldays that scientific experimentation was about proving something with a 100% degree of certainty.  Simply put, if I construct a compound of X% of this chemical and Y% of that one, I can expect to always see the same results and can prove and replicate my experiment.  Has science changed?  If I put a little bit less than X% or Y% into the compound and got different results would it be okay so long as they were 95% right?







 

  

Labour must be 'credible' on cuts

So slowly the penny is dropping in the Labour Party.

Labour must have "genuine credibility" on the economy and would accept £5bn of defence cuts, shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy has said.

He told the Guardian he accepted the scrapping of Nimrod spy planes, savings in the Trident programme and cuts to civilian allowances.
Mr Murphy said it was "compulsory" that the party be "credible" on defence spending - rather than "populist".

This follows on from comments made, earlier this week, from Lord Glasman, an adviser to Ed Miliband.

Writing in the leftist New Statesman he said

Old faces from the Brown era still dominate the shadow cabinet and they seem stuck in defending Labour's record in all the wrong ways – we didn't spend too much money, we'll cut less fast and less far, but we can't tell you how."
In a caustic assessment, he says: "Labour is apparently pursuing a sectional agenda based on the idea that disaffected Liberal Democrats and public-sector employees will give Labour a majority next time round. But we have not won, and show no signs of winning, the economic argument. We have not articulated a constructive alternative capable of recognising our weaknesses in government and taking the argument to the coalition. We show no relish for reconfiguring the relationship between the state, the market and society. The world is on the turn, yet we do not seem equal to the challenge."

A health warning though.

This Blog does not advise you to hold your breath waiting for either of the two Eds - Miliband and Balls (could I call them Miliballs?) -  to come out and admit that the policy they have been pushing is now not only lacking in credibility but is being publicly said to be so by those at the heart of their own party

The Guardian reports:

Labour officials refused to comment on the article, which comes as Miliband's personal poll ratings remain low and tensions over political strategy on the economy, welfare and spending are surfacing.

On Twitter, however, the former deputy prime minister John Prescott said: "Glasman. You know sod all about politics, economic policy, Labour or solidarity. Bugger off and go 'organise' some communities!"

 I can't help but think that Glasman has to be right, if only because he upsets the erudite Prescott!