A thought just struck me. I wonder how much the taxpayer will be fleeced for to pay for a nice little severance deal for Damian McBride. Six months? A year?
Let me make a suggestion. He shouldn't be paid a penny beyond yesterday. If I was his boss I would have sacked him for gross misconduct. Perhaps he was allowed to 'resign himself' in order to get a better pay off.
How Brown handles this will be very illuminating indeed.
How Brown handles this resignation will be fascinating and the odds are that Brown will try and get somebody else to do it. As for pay off - well at least six months or he will sue somebody! Let's talk about £100k (taxpayers' lolly of course).
ReplyDeleteHe's too unpleasant to just fade quietly away. He may be "gone" but the stench is still there.
ReplyDeletehttp://therantingkingpenguin.blogspot.com/
Good point.
ReplyDeleteAnd if that drink-soaked mutant McBride is 34, then I'm a toddler.
Happy Easter.
Perhaps the PM needs some old style civil servants to tell him the real truth about what is going on
ReplyDeletehttp://dylanje.blogspot.com/2009/04/epistemological-problems.html
bring back Sir Humphrey...
I think McBride fell on his sword to protect his boss (Brown, ergo Brown needed protecting, therefore Brown knew something about the smears/Red Rag).
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for McBride this selfless act won't win him any Brownie Points, as it were. Brown doesn't care about the fate of his underlings, they're all just cannon fodder as far as he is concerned.
The failed Labour Ministers are in a different position, they can all potentially do a Howe/Cook speech that will seal Brown's fate.
I suggest the Select Committee with responsibility for the Civil Service looks into it all:
ReplyDeletehttp://donalblaney.blogspot.com/2009/04/parliaments-role-in-smeargate.html
Kevin Maguire applying for McBride's old job?
ReplyDeleteHopefully it'll be a large pay-off, with all sort of benefits.
ReplyDeleteA bit like Fred the Shred's, and it can be brought up to embarrass Labour more, and ask questions as to why he wasn't sacked, and instead allowed to resign.
McBride will still be kept around, he's too useful to Brown and in a few months time I reckon it'd be well worth tracking down where Browns expenses are going... After all, McBride will want paying and it'll probably not be via a direct payroll.
Oh, and in other news Brown has difficulty understanding the word 'voluntary' - as on the BBC it's reported he wants "compulsory volunteers"
ReplyDeleteHe really puts the 'moron' into 'oxymoron' doesn't he?
Of course, if he really *has* resigned properly, then surely all sorts of civil service processes must have kicked in?
ReplyDelete* Security passes cancelled?
* Email address deleted?
* Blackberry and mobile phone service disabled?
Surely in this time of elevated surveillance, we can't have ex-employees wandering around Westminster with top-level access, can we?
I wonder how one could check these things?
McBride knows where the bodies are. He'll be looked after - one way or another.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Gordon announce two weeks ago that he was cutting the early retirement pay-offs to members of the Senior Civil Service? In any case, he resigned so he should get nothing.
ReplyDeleteNew video here:
ReplyDeleteMcBride Downfall
As McBride was clearly doing Labour Party work while on the Civil Service payroll, the Labour Party should be be required to re-imburse the taxpayer for part of his salary (and any pay-off).
ReplyDeleteI'm sure he sorted all this out with Lord Myners in advance.
ReplyDeleteSurely if he resigned he should only be paid up till then.As he was a civil servant then he was not doing his job properly and should not even expect a pension,let alone severance pay.Can members of the public club together and sue him if he gets away withy it.
ReplyDeleteBrown is very clear...
ReplyDeletethere should be no rewards for failure!
The project failed.
It certainly would make Brown's use of Sir Fred Goodwin as as=n Aunt Sally look even more hypocritical.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Harperson will be invited on the BBC to say that "the court of public opinion" says not to pay him?
Since when does compensation become payable upon resignation?
ReplyDeleteThe bunker team have had a few weeks to formulate their defence strategy since the issue was made public on the Daily Politics Show.
If Brown was not aware of the Red Rag plot he would have questioned Draper and McBride at the time, and demanded to see the emails, and then handed out the P45s.
The fact that he said nowt until the News of the World got in on the act says it all.
I thought a year was customary.
ReplyDeleteLook out for the government's last honours list as well, nothing would surprise me after LORD Mandelson!
David T Breaker
www.newsjunction.co.uk
How does that work, then? In the real world where I live, resigning means you forfeit severence package & pension - everything except your own contributions and accrued holiday pay. You have dropped your employer in it so you go with nothing. If you are sacked for good reason, ditto. You only get anything at all if you are sacked unfairly or made redundant. So, er...? Is it very different in the public sector? Is McPoison a member of Unite or something?
ReplyDeletewv trucur
Donal,
ReplyDeleteI suggest the minister for the civil service sort it out. Oh, wait...
wv pangloss. What's going on with this wv?
You asked how old he is - I think 34/35 is right. He was at Cambridge with my wife - the Peterhouse '95 yearbook has some pictures. He has aged terribly..
ReplyDeleteUnsworth got it in one
ReplyDeleteMc Bride has a lot of ammo stored
So, yes, as he resigned, there can be no severance - at least not officially. He'll be OK though. I'd have thought he is well connected enough to make his resignation financially beneficial. And if the worst comes to the worst, I'm sure he could find a job at the Telegraph...
ReplyDelete