Yvette Cooper appeared on the Today Programme this morning explaining how there is a strong moral duty for the bankers not to accept their bonuses, even when there are legal contractual obligations for the banks to give them out.
Then within seconds, John Humphrys challenged Cooper about Jacqui Smith, Cooper and hubby Balls all claiming maximum expenses against their second homes, even when the justification of these payments were extremely flakey in the public's eyes. Straight away Cooper launched into the defence that she, Smith and Balls were only following obligations and rules set down by Parliament and that they were only claiming what they were entitled to.
The paradox of telling bankers that they should ignore what they were legally entitled to, while politicians like her should continue to receive what they are entitled to, seemed to escape her.
So much for 'moral obligation', then, eh ?
I think Labour's sleaze attack is really hurting them.
ReplyDeleteThey are unable to take the moral high ground, after enjoying that particular luxury for years given the record of the previous Conservative government.
Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteOld Labour might have been economically illiterate but most of them were decent people.
is 'moral obligations' and 'yvette cooper' an example of an oxymoron ?
ReplyDeleteMy favourite was John H. demanding an answer to the question and her replying:
ReplyDelete"Let me answer and then I'll tell you."
Morality and Labour? Oxymoron, I believe.
ReplyDeleteunfortunately Humphy brought her role into the question allowing her to avoid the question on Smith. The irony was still delightful
ReplyDeleteThis is what blogs were invented for: anyone who heard that spat their cornflakes out and became instantly furious at the top of the week. Yet within an hour 2 threads on respectable blogs have posted threads.
ReplyDeleteQUITE.
ReplyDeleteI think the same will have occurred to all listeners. What a bloody hypocrite.
I found it quite a bizarre interview really, most of it seemed to run like this:
ReplyDeleteJH: But don't you think you should stop RBS from paying out £1 billion?
YC: Of course, we strongly condemn that kind of thing and reccomend that they don't pay the money.
JH: But what are you actually going to do about it?
YC: Er....
Don't just sit there - email her at
ReplyDeletepublic.enquiries@hm-treasury.gov.uk
Here's my contribution
I refer to your interview on Radio 4 this morning. Even by your own abysmal standards you have plumbed new depths of hypocrisy, talking about bankers moral duties when MP's, the latest example being the Home Secretary, are lying, profiteering and feathering their own nests at the expense of taxpayers. Shame on you and your execrable colleagues.
I heard her on R5 and couldn't believe my ears.
ReplyDeleteI'm very surprised they put her up bearing in mind her own personal arrangements.
Can't wait for PMQs.
I'm coming round to thinking these people need some serious bothering in volume. and I would plead with people to do just that. My second contribution today has been sent to the Home Office -
ReplyDeleteAs a taxpayer I would like to know why the Home Secretary thinks she can expropriate my money for her own personal advantage
I think Mr Draper, that most esteemed and erudite political philosopher and psychologist would recommend that people avoid Today on Monday mornings. I used to ban myself until at least Wednesday in an attempt to ease myself into the week. To avoid high blood pressure and apoplectic rage before even stepping over the threshold at work - 'Today' - the best alarm clock money can buy!
ReplyDeleteMy radio went out the window
ReplyDeleteAgain
Cooper is an odious little shit.
ReplyDeleteI have taken seebags advice and emailed his comment to which I have added
"How can the government morally prosecute benefit frauds when government ministers are themselves defrauding the public?"
Cooper and Balls are a disgrace but Smith has lost all moral authority to govern. I refuse to take anything she has to say seriously.
Thank God I can't get Radio4.
ReplyDeleteI am going to stop reading the papers or this blog. My blood pressure can't stand it. To hell with their 'rules' and 'entitlements' - Balls, Cooper, Smith and co are guilty of fraud by any sensible definition of the word.
Reform the Lords?
My foot. It is the Commons that needs reforming - and right quick at that.
I have always loathed Yvette Cooper, but this morning on Today she revealed herself as terminally stupid.
ReplyDeleteClearly no idea that the 'Middle Britain' that deludedly voted her lot into power is beginning to feel a consuming rage at the way it has been betrayed, particularly its hope that the disadvantaged among us might have their lot improved. This was a sincere hope among those who voted for St Tony, and it has been betrayed hand over fist by ideology and incompetence. I never voted for New Labour, but if I had my rage would be all-consuming.
No doubt she will go down foaming at the mouth about how wonderful Gordon is. In the end, I suppose you have to feel sorry for her.
The sad thing is that it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that she doesn't see the irony in her argument, but then no-one terminally stupid would be able to see that.
ReplyDeleteWe have to wait for the GE, but with every day it comes closer to the time when I sit up all night and see the looks on their faces when the electorate give them the kicking they deserve. That will be when they truly realise how loathed they are.
Morals, Labour; Labour, Morals. No sorry I just don't see the connection.
ReplyDeleteword ver - juggle (presumably expenses related)
Well done Iain, a 'Masterly' comment.
ReplyDeleteI would draw attention to Dizy's post re david Lammy - and the people who pay for his research assistant.
ReplyDeletehttp://dizzythinks.net/2009/02/can-perception-be-more-dangerous-than.html
Neaven forbid I should suggest that Lammy would be influenced by who pays for him to do his job. He is after all set such a good example by his colleague the Home Secretary.
As others have noted, the word "moral" in association with NuLaboids is a semiotic leap too far.
ReplyDeleteThere are one or two famous people in history - Hitler, Thatcher, Churchill, William Wilberforce,Peter Sutcliffe, Ghandi, etc, who variously attracted approbrium. But they all had one thing in common; they believed in what they were doing, in some cases, blindly.
These Labour types don't believe in anything. They just about know when they are lying, which is most of the time. Lying, under New Labour, is the default option, and it's flipside is cynicism and hypocracy.
So the point is that they are worse, far worse than any of the above, because deep down, they know they are perpetrating a raft of lies.
I may blog about this myself
www.wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com
It's quite stomach-churning to hear Mrs Balls' views on morality. Do we not remember the phrase 'it's complicated' when her husband was questioned about their 'expenses' and arrangements.
ReplyDeleteYou bet it's complicated.
But obvious, nonetheless.
wv benta - no kidding. Another word for a bent female politician, then.
Minister's renumeration doesn't enclude any clauses even vaguely addressing performance.
ReplyDeleteThe Blinkies could help to make a total balls (sic) of the british econo.. Oh hang on, They have!
If she thought about it, Coooper would presumably justify her apparrent hypocrisy by blaming the banks for our current predicamanet. Govt ministers, in contrast, did not cause the financial meltdown and are currently in the process of saving us all from armageddon and so they are entitlked to claim their expenses. Plus its all Thathcer's fault.
ReplyDelete"But thats bollocks" I hear your cry - their fingerprints are all over this mess because of the lax monetary policy and bank regulation arrangements that they have operated for the last 11 years. Well yes of-course it is. But tell that to Yvette and Jackie and Ed and Ally and Gord and Mandy and ....etc...,
Here, here!
ReplyDeleteThey lost the ability to be objective and put a mirror up to themselves the night before the election victory in 1997. (If not before.)
It's been a melange of hypocrisy since.
Now the truth is coming out, after a vast implosion in the economy, and it's a shame the greater public is not faster to see the point.
And I will add that it reminds me of the Kevin Costner movie "If you build it he will come".
ReplyDeleteIf you build the rules in that way in the UK, they will come to the trough and lick away to their heart's content.
It has happened and we see it now - at last (alas on top of others because the MSM could not make a deal of it).
But it's not just Gordy-boy & Co that has to come clean here; if we are to see a Con Gov, then they need to be seen to be squeaky clean too.
Bring it on and fast.
Any other comments are defunct IMHO.
I've lost count of how many times this government have been found out to be sleazy, greedy and corrupt. The tragic thing is that they don't even seem to realise it. When will we get a bloody election?!
ReplyDeleteI think we need a list just to remind everyone what has happened since they took power.
ReplyDeleteWhere did it start?
Bernie and tobacco advertising ban?
Are her words an example of 'joined up government'? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine if a Tory had been caught on the same fiddle?
ReplyDeleteThe BBC would have torn them to shreds at every opportunity.
I wonder if Dave will be motivated to take the BBC to task for their obvious political bias?
Can anyone explain to me why you can hardly read anything about this outside of the Mail newspapers? Where is the indignation in the press of these bastards taking us for a ride?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Letters From A Tory - this IS REALLY hurting Labour.
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian has just Closed down comments on an excellent article by Carole Cadwallahdr about Jacqui Smiths Expenses fiasco which was attracting a shed load of comments adverse to the Home Secretary, Labour and the Guardian as their uncritical supporters.
Iain - I would love to see you write some more about this; in particular the way the Guardian stifles Free Speech whilst claiming that, quote: \"Comment is Free, but the Facts are Sacred"
If you like - I'd be happy to write it ;o)
I want my moey back . A taxpayer [and complete idiot in the eyes of the `politicians`--- my school and university did not consider me as an idiot , why do these people put me in this pigeon hole? ]
ReplyDelete