Robert Goodwill MP has just asked the Prime Minister about Cherie signing the Hutton Report. Tony Blair replied: "I do not think any offence was intended". So that's alright then.I didn't see the earlier part of PMQs as I was doing a local radio piece with Radio Nottingham on the Little Red Book. Was I right in hearing on the radio that Ming had a bit of an IDS moment with a frog in his throat? His first question was a good one but it was a little odd that he followed it up with an almost identical question to the one which David Cameron has asked. I thought barristers were able to think on their feet?
UPDATE: Just in case my LibDem readers think I have launched another gratuitous attack on the old boy, John Pienaar has just slated his performance on 5 Live.
Yes Iain, Ming's first question was about why a promise to create a national gun register was not fulfilled and then followed up by a tangent question about the Home Office in general but begun in a way that suggested Ming thought it was somehow cleverly linked.
ReplyDeleteClearly the aluminium tea urns have done him in.
The response of the Speaker was pathetic. Makes you wonder what the point of him is? Another of our Scots overlords...
ReplyDeleteAs for this issue. If the media are hushing it up(because of their complicity) and it isn't a matter for the House, then where on earth are people able to raise this appalling issue? Blair reckons no offence was intended. Well good wishes just aren't enough. Offence WAS caused and we deserve an answer.
BTW Dave was useless(again!). He needs to stop whining. And why the hell have the Tories not been supporting the law and order agenda?!
Dave's taken the party to a lead in a Guardian poll... Let's give him a break!
ReplyDeleteThat argument about the law and order stuff by Blair was nonsense. He basicalyl listed a load of measures that the Tories alledgely didn't support but many of them happen to be the exact same measures that have failed and casued the current mess at the Home Office, so opposing them was in fact the right thing to do surely?
ReplyDeleteI thought Michael Martin seemed a bit too partial towards Blair, when he threatened to end PMQs if people didn't stop hissing.
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing... was it me or had Theresa May time travelled from the 1960s to todays question time?
ReplyDeleteDizzy
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that many of these measures were in fact nonsense. My major gripe with Dave is the silence on law and order from the Tories. Labour are able to get their message out there, and we say nothing. Yes they are incompetent but people won't put us much ahead of them unless we come up with better POLICY! Two issues will decide the next election, as they do most. Crime and the economy. Labour is a shambles on one and weak on the other, but the public perception is that the Tories are no better on crime and that Brown is running a strong economy. If we don't come up with POLICY on these two issues we will lose again.
Good work Goodwill and Vaizey - two new MPs keeping the pressure up on the PM - good to see.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5012280.stm
There was a point of order + a follow-up one from the guy who represents Kelly's constituency too - about the offence caused.
ReplyDeleteIt asked for a speaker ruling on whether it was acceptable to auction House provided documents for party fund-raising purposes.
Martin waffled about the EDM on the first. Then asked not to have members involve him in party-political controversy on the second.
I thought Blair looked as though he knew full well he was very vulnerable on the PMQ
Surely questions permisable if he'd been asked if the copy of the report was one officially supplied, and if so who to, or if it had been purchased from HMSO?
ReplyDeletePoverty Is Thrift said...
ReplyDeletethe national gun register is a total waste of time and money, it will achieve precisely nothing
Thats a bit cynical, what wrong with spending millions of pounds on software system that will be delivered 2 years late, at double the cost and then crash when it is implimented? Its never stopped Labour before..
Nick Assinder says that Blair's reponse to Goodwill was the closest we have got to an apology - "I do not believe any offence to any one was intended," said Mr Blair. In other words, it is true and I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't say it in a very apologetic tone!
ReplyDeleteI've written to the PM demanding that he gets 'er-in-doors and Campbell to make public appologies.
ReplyDeleteI bet he won't. Can we get everyone to write to him too?
Go here: http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page821.asp
I was just rereading some stuff about David Kelly, and found some rather odd websites which are a bit scary, to put it mildly. Would anyone care to debunk them to put my mind at rest? Google for
ReplyDeletedavid kelly dead microbiologists
to see the sort of thing I mean.
Iain, you did well to miss Cameron's performance today. Ming was poor, but Dave was hopeless. He whines, and then sits down and varies his expression from smug to 'slapped arse'. Still, Gavin seems so pleased to have gained a lead in the opinion polls four years before a General Election. Does anyone still remember the Tory opinion poll lead during the fuel crisis? As for Theresa May... isn't she just put there to make Cameron look good (let's face it, she almost makes Margaret Beckett look attractive)... I think Blair uses Prescott for the same purpose.
ReplyDelete£400 = amount raised at fundraiser tastelessly by labour party
ReplyDeletepriceless = no. of former Labour voters not going to vote labour for many years because of this.
Politicians and journalists are too dependent on his goodwill to ever remark that Mick Martin is the worst Speaker in living memory (even worse than Betty).They will fart out their views on the declining power of the Commons, never stating the need for the Speaker to be a ferocious Old Testament prophet like George Thomas, not a time-server grateful to have escaped from the Gorbals.
ReplyDeleteSERO
As I mentioned once before, the silly cow doesn't even know she's done anything wrong. Now it seems as though the rest of the government are just as pig ignorant, including her expensively educated husband.
ReplyDeleteNote to anyone thinking of sending their child to a public school for a grounding in manners: on this evidence, Fettes should definately not be considered.
RM
National gun register has been superseded by a National Person Register complete with biometrics.
ReplyDeleteHaving disarmed the citizenry so only illegal guns can be held.............phase two is to brand all the citizens so the illegals know who they are
If you want to know the history of M Martin's appointment as Speaker I suggest you refer to a recently published book of sleaze as practised by the Vicar of Albion and his acolytes. Available etc.
ReplyDeleteI still ponder the lack of media enthusiasm for the story - the reporting has been perfunctory. There is an inside track somewhere. Why do we not know the name of the successful bidder? Some in the media know but why the silence. Pass the sickbag.
Michael Oakeshott: "Another of our Scots overlords..."
ReplyDeleteStuff the petty racism.
What is awful is all this politeness and pussyfooting around, while such treachery goes on around us, pulling our once great nation into the gutter.
ReplyDeleteI hope Mr Dale that if you become an MP you will be as forceful as your blogging and not put up with this nonsense.
Why don't a few MPs ever throw a wobbly? Where's the passion? Look at the wimps that are the Labour rebels. They don't agree with anything Blair does, but they still campaign for him to be re-elected.
They are either weak wimps or Blair sychophants and the Tory side isn't much better either. Please Mr Dale always be your own man and keep fighting!
Blimey, Finally Bob Piper has the courage to post after giving this blog a miss while it's been discussing the antics of the disgusting wife of our corrupt little PM.Typical Nulabour ignore the facts completely and try and change the subject.
ReplyDeleteWhat is truly outstanding is, this government is generally regarded as utterly, institutionally corrupt. Rolling in corruption of every aspect. Elena and Ceaucescu. The most corrupt people Britain has ever been governed by, yet Blair 'n' Cher jet off for a taxpayer-funded holiday, leaving the voraciously corrupt moron John Prescott in charge of the country, their toadies and acolytes behave as though nothing unusual is happening in the country when the corruption is only equalled by the incompetence. Of the Home Office, where an illegal alien who was adjudicating on asylum claims offered asylum in our country (where he has no right to be) for sex; where they have no idea how many illegal immigrants are swarming over Britain; where they lose track of alien criminals, but punish British criminals for wanting to fly the national flag of England. A corrupt and incompetent Metropolitan Police force. Everywhere you look in Britain, it's corruption, sleaze and incompetence. And Ceaucescu and Elena go on holiday. From what, I wonder? Work? They are far worse than Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Far, far worse.
ReplyDelete- Anonymousette