Labour MP and former Transport Minister Tom Harris has been talking to Today in Parliament about his sacking. Was it because of his blog? Listen HERE. It's 23 minutes into the programme.
UPDATE: Tom has also written about the experience of being sacked in today's Mail on Sunday. It's not online on their site so he has provided the "director's cut" on his blog. If I were him I'd make that the last time it was mentioned.
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Or here to listen directly on the video feed (Youtubed).
http://www.mattwardman.com/
Or on Tom's blog tomorrow, I expect.
the reasons for his 'departure'?
1 'i stuck by a friend' -no way is this acceptable behaviour in ANY political party these days
2 the public don't want to hear a minister reciting what is very obviously the line handed down from HQ
sic transit gloria mundi - gloria goes off sick on mondays
Hey Iain When will dave be crossing the floor?
David Cameron, Conservative leader
Adam Boulton Live, Sky News
Mr Cameron said he would support the government taking a majority shareholding in RBS, and called for a “real plan for the real economy”.
“I think the Prime Minister has done the right thing in announcing the plan to recapitalise the banking system, because doing nothing was simply not an option.
“What we need now actually is a real plan for the real economy. What‘s required now is the put in place those things to help families and businesses in what is a difficult time."
Asked if would support a government move to take a majority shareholding in RBS he said, “Yes, we think you need to do what is necessary to recapitalise the banks.
“Putting capital into banks to strengthen them needs to happen.”
Asked whether he supported John Maples’ call for top bankers to lose their jobs in the wake of the financial crisis he said, “I would be very surprised if they all kept their jobs. It is a matter for the boards of individual banks. Right now the important thing is to sort the system out.
“I have nothing against people earning good money and earning a good bonus – I believe in a market enterprise system. If the taxpayer is going to put money into these banks it would be completely wrong for senior executives in those banks to get a bonus this year. We do need to look at bonus systems that cause banks to take irresponsible risks.”
He accepted that borrowing would have to increase to fund recapitalisation, “Borrowing is gong to increase because money is being lent to recapitalize these banks.”
He might as well!
Anon said:
"sic transit gloria mundi - gloria goes off sick on mondays"
And always and inevitably back to his bleak, though luxurious, bunker, til up pop the new glorianas:
Hic Rhodus, hic Salta!
Beggar the bunkerites, we need politicians brave and clever enough to listen and to think outside their party boxes.
What we do not need is the new boss, same as the old boss, who has engineered our current crisis through such gross negligence: Mandelson and his puppet, Brown.
Nor do we need their new party, same as the old party policies and thinking: the failed, corrupt, elitist, undemocratic and increasingly authoritarian New Labour ideology that has so fragmented our country and values and so damaged and weakened our communities and economy.
Not surprised about Tom Harris's sacking by Gordo.
I worked in Scotland during 1980s and knew some one who went to university with Gordo and knew Gordo who was then a sociology lecturer for a time in Glasgow College of Technology (now Glasgow Caledonian University), a 2nd tier Scottish Polytechnic. You see, Gordo was not an economic Whizz Kid, but a PhD in Scottish Labour History. He said Gordo did not strike friendship with any one who was not a Labour voter (in those days Tories had many MPs in Scotland). He said Gordo comes from a comfortabale COS Bishop's family, middle classish, a few notches above financially from the rest of the working class, not his 'I come from an ordinary family'crap he dishes out. The COS influence was all pervasive in Fife areas of Gordo and in universities like Edinburgh.
He has been Labour Party apparatchik all his life, a partisan politician with tunnelled
vision, not the one who will accept bipartisan offer from Cameron and not the one who tolerate Tom Harris's dabbling with this blog!
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