The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, has been talking about the loss of two discs containing the child benefit details of millions of people. She was asked on the Daily Politics if the Chancellor knew -- when he addressed MPs this week -- that a senior person in Revenue and Customs knew about the decision to send the discs through the post. She replied...
As far as what the allegation that's been made by ..by Edward Leigh, the
chair of the Public Accounts Committee, about the level of seniority of......
the decision making in terms of sending out those cds .....that is.....one of
the things when sudden problem arises.... that you have to do is.....you have to
find out what actually did go on and there's a number of suggestions of what did
and didn't go on.... and who said what to whom and when... and... .. Alistair
Darling the Chancellor has appointed Keiron Pointer, the head of PWC to look
into that, he'll do a quick investigation and report back to the House.
Glad that's clear, then.
47 comments:
Northern Rock is not labour fault. We are cleaning the bank up. This is like blaming the toilet cleaner because someone with dyera spilled when they wehnt to the toilet.
they are all liars. every last one of them.
cant wait for the election
I saw that interview... its really pretty stupid isn't it? Completely incoherent. Also if no senior person were involved how come we have a system where a junior person can just info dump the entire database on to discs!?
I don't suppose many people watching (and trying to make sense of what she said) were very convinced. It looked to me as if the more she spoke, the more votes she was losing. But perhaps there is a small, dedicated, Harman fan-club out there who hang on her every word even if they don't always add up to sentences. The bits that did make sense didn't sound particularly true or convincing. Is she the best Labour, New or Old, can do? How embarrassing!
of course she's incoherent.
She has to be .
SHE does not know what the truth is.
DARLING probably does.. but he's not saying.
Give the poor woman a chance. She's just cannon fodder.
A simple foot soldier to take the bullets and shield the real culprit.. who ran HMRC for 10 years.
A quick investigation eh? Hmm personally I would prefer a thorough one. Although it is clear that the only time the guy needs to 'investigate' is the length of time it takes to find some industrial strength whitewash.
It was not Darling's fault either. Why do you keep blaming labour. Going back to my my toilet analogy. This like someone vandalising the toilet, then blaming the toilet cleaner. What cheek.
She then went on to goose the sound man and eat all the pies....
If she's 'Daughter of Prescott', I wonder what her left hook is like?
dirty european socialist - To use your toilet analogy. Darling is like the toliet attendant charging every passer by to clean the toilets whether or not they are using them. Then flushing the money straight down the pan.
I just love this stream of consciousness stuff, it's so creative.
God, the woman's a moron on stilts, isn't she? First, she postures as though this were a minor annoyance that the 'little people' shouldn't be trying to get involved in. The government will take care of it.
Then she talks like a sitcom housewife over the garden fence, "An' I said, I said, I am not going to concern myself with what 'e did or didn't say. An' then Edward Leigh turned around and said it's all down to the level of security, innit?"
This is a senior minister in HM Government and the reason her voice was muffled was, she had her head up so far up her arse she could read her designer belt label from the inside.
It won't be long until they are beating up on the 25 million victimised families themselves and warning them not to overreact. Then we'll get a new law against overreacting against actions taken by the government.
God, I hate these people. Harriet Harmon is made up of around 98% fat globules.
Actually I thought the whole programme was a bit of a shambles today. Trying to deal with Harman's drivelling nulab speak even managed to throw Danny Fink off his stride. It was like drowning in a stream of nonsense.
To take the toilet anology further.
Darling is not throwing money down the ****. He is trying to block the toilet so the man who is trying to throw money , which is the bank that collpased down the pan is not able too. Irt was not Darling that aused the bank to be in chaos.
So with the toilet analogy, shouldn't we be blaming Brown for stranding us up sh*t creek?
Have you noticed that Brown has sent henchpeople to defend the indefensible who have no connection with the Treasury/HMRC?
It's so that when it turns out they were lying, he can say well Hutton/Harman can't have had all the facts when they lied so they weren't really lying.
And we used to think that statistics were bad.
It eas not labour that got us uop sh* creek it was Northern Rock with all respect to Northner rock' bosses they made an error. Now labour has to get us out of shit creek. They will have to paddle but i expect them too.
Verity,
Do programmes like 'Daily Politics' reach you complete via the Web or do you have to work hard piecing things together from news items? I worked overseas for some years, rather a long time ago, and only had BBC World Service and sometimes rather ancient newspapers in those days. It took me a few weeks to find out who 'The Beatles' were, for instance! (And yes, it was in 1963.)
Harman really is a pain, isn't she! Still her contributions are the equivalent of extra, unpaid-for Tory party political broadcasts, or broadcast for any other non-Labour party come to that.
Why is it up to the taxpayer to bail out a failing enterprise?
Oh yes: when it's in a Labour heartland!
Henry Rogers, the world of international communications has moved on considerably during the past 44 years. It was probably just the People's BBC in those days. Even domestically, communications have surged forward. And the spirit of deference is almost dead, although I wish John Humphreys would start calling ministers by their Christian (sic) names.
verity said...
"God, the woman's a moron on stilts, isn't she?"
Are you looking in the mirror?
verity said...
"It won't be long until they are beating up on the 25 million victimised families"
7 million families, 25 million people.
So after years of picking on Prescott because he didn't speak in the 'right way' you're now going to have a pop at Harman. Were all Tories bullied at school or something, seems like the only reason for the way they talk about others.
Why no mention of Patrick Mercer this week Iain?
http://gtrmancfabians.blogspot.com/2007/11/media-headlines.html
Media puppet.
[3:22] - Thanks. I was puzzled, because I am certain there are not 25m families in Britain. But 25m people is a good number of people to have discommoded and frightened. I still like it.
Greater Manchester Fabians - Reading comprehension problems? "So after years of picking on Prescott because he didn't speak in the 'right way'...".
No we picked on Prescott because he's a crude, vulgar, lazy, crass, lying inadequate whose behaviour would bring shame to a tribe of monkeys (and not very nice monkeys, at that). We hated Tony Blair with the same level of vehemence, and - at least when not on a TV sofa - he spoke "the right way".
Lefties always think it comes down to "class"! Prescott was the class warrior - most Tories are not. It's not how you say it but what you say.
Prescott was lampooned because he said idiotic things and so shall Harman.
dirty european socialist
Getting back to the toilet:
Why don't you ram your head down it?
Re the other issue on Daily Politics i.e People Trafficking/Prostitution.
There was a large Conference to take this issue forward held a t Avon and Somerset Police HQ in around 1998/99 chaired I think by the CC of Glocestershire. All sorts of people there from all sorts of agencies to 'sort it all out'. It was even attended by a Govt Minister.
9 years later it makes the news as if it's a new thing and people like Harman still trot out garbage and say how terrible it all is and we must 'look at the problem.
WE HAVE- NINE YEARS AGO
3:38 I know you like to do that alot and it is compliment from you. But it is not something most men like to do.
I very much doubt that Keiron Pointer's report will be made to the House of Commons.
Until we disenfranchise the public sector (to include MPs) and the welfare sector, we will never rid this country of the virus of communism.
I await Gordon Brown's announcement of targets for tractor production in the next Five Year Plan with morbid anticipation.
Prescott, yes. Will the ODPM go down in English history as a glorious institution?
Harriet Harman has always been a dunce. Wasn't she a treasury spokesman [sic] at one time? I seem to recall her parotting the 'line to take' on the Today programme like a speak-your-weight machine.
But we must never forget the dearth of talent on the Labour benches. There are a quite a large number of Labour MPs who struggle to read out the whips' planted questions, never mind putting together a coherent sentence of their own.
"...the world of international communications..."
Verity,
Indeed! And I would guess that most of us here have got more computing and communicating power on (and under) our desks at home than we would have dared to dream of in the office a decade or so ago. Which puts punched paper tape and Hollerith cards in perspective, not to mention hand crank calculators with 7 figure trig tables. Mind you, the nice thing about working as a surveyor in the bush 40 years ago was that communication with the office in England was by letter at the end of each month. Mobiles (in the modern sense rather than those pretentious decorations in coffee shops) are a mixed blessing!
Though how much of the bandwidth is taken up by noise and how much by signal is debatable.
But you never answered my direct question about whether you do yourself access 'Daily Politics', or 'Newsnight' come to that, complete or piece it together in slow time. As a supplementary, if you do access them complete, and near the time of transmission, how often are you driven you turn them off when the studio guests are particularly fatuous or cringeworthy? My answer to that, btw, is 'very often'!
Unfair to Prescott. JP was a highly intelligent guy who just seemed a bit thick because of his Northern accent and syntactical problems. Harman genuinely is as thick as pigshit.
The thing is Prescott was a working class boy, no education, who climbed the ladder due, in the early days, to genuine affection. Whereas Harperson is from a ruling class of the privately educated priviledged elite, with no excuse except stupidity and mendacity.
"JP was a highly intelligent guy who just seemed a bit thick because of his Northern accent"
Oh, really? William Hague's strong Yorkshire accent never led me to think he is the slightest bit thick. I've never thought that Malcolm Rifkind sounded thick because he has a Scottish accent. I never thought that Bill Clinton sounded thick because he has a hillbilly accent.
John Prescott's a crude,coarse backroom dealer. No one said he's thick. We say he is sly, lazy, and utterly dishonourable. No one here has accused him of being thick. He is very much on the qui vive for his own advantage.
Harriet Harmon, I agree, is genuinely stupid and has, in the powerless, made-up post of "deputy leader" has reached her genuine level of incompetence.
I can say hand on heart that I have not seen Harriet Harmon give a straight answer a single question put to her in the last two months. The rest of the cabinet are no better.
If I were Gordon Brown, I would find an excuse to keep them off camera (and radio) for as long as possible.
Paul Linford ".. Harman genuinely is as thick as .... "
Pavlos - Language
We may think it, but
Ladies & Children & Junior Eagles read this Blogge Eruditissimo
After all, not all these Humans (homo pseudo sapiens) are born to be intelligent
and Bertie Wooster would not bandy a Lady's name, especially if Mrs Dromey is related to the Nobility of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
G E
Guidance points from "First Basics for NuLabour Ministers":-
1. Blame the Tories - even though they haven't been in power for over a decade.( Ed:keep reminding people about "Black Wednesday" and "Westland")
2.. State that " we obviously haven't got the message through correctly to the electorate and we need to work harder" (Ed:The electorate are obviously - thick !)
3. Gordon Brown is the most successful Chancellor in a generation and the British Economy one of the strongest(Ed:OK so Gordon's a cr*p PM and please God don't let there be anymore Northern Rock fiascos!)
4 The country is indebted to our armed forces and the government has nothing but admiration for them(Ed:Yeh right - but don't ask us to pay for them)
5 Devolution is one of the success story's of this government(Ed:Damn the SNP )
Its a shame the information lost on those CD's weren't as incoherent or encrypted as Harman's comments, those of us effected might be able to sleep easier.
This government doesn't make mistakes, it bl**dy plans them!!
I remember the good old days when she hated the Police and the Government etc etc. Whenever you meet her say "Pop the kettle on love" just to get her going. Lefties have no sense of humour.(apart from their expenses claims)
PS I've always liked John Prescott as you will have gathered from my Telegraph comments and at least he has had a real job. This is NOT a joke.
When I read the headline to this section I thought that some of the data from the lost discs had seeped out.
Dirty European Socialist,
Have you been drinking as this discussion's steadily progressed? Or is it just that you have fat fingers and can't quite hit the keys on your keyboard accurately?
Thanks for picking up on this - Harmann was utterly useless. When asked about the disks she just said "no, I want to talk about Northern Rock".
Brillo may have been too flabberghasted to slap her down, but he should have.
Harmann just came across as quasi Blears.
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