Sometimes I really shake my had in bewilderment at what this government thinks it can get away with. It refused to renew Sir Alastair Graham's contract as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life because he had criticised Tony Blair's style of government once too often. And what have they done today? Appointed Rita Donaghy as the interim Chair of the Committee. She's an old style trade unionist and an active Labour Party campaigner.
Isn't it strange that at a time when Labour is arguing vociferously against limits on the amount of money trade unions can donate to the Labour Party, they appoint a Trade Union dinosaur to this position? Not really, I suppose. In fact, I don't know why I should be at all surprised.
31 comments:
Time to clear out the Augean stables, methinks..the amount of crap building up is phenomenal...
Even worse is the disingenuous, not to say mendacious, 'non-denial denial' from Peter Hain about whether Labour will go into a coalition after the Welsh Assembly elections..
But was Sir Alistair Graham not a former Trade Unionist as well? Also all the heads of the Committee on Standards in Public Life have served just one term, so has Sir Alistair Graham been treated any differently to past heads?
Guess we will have to see what the next PM has planned for the committee. But appointing party supporters to quango's and committee's is not something exclusive to New Labour, it was rife throughout the Thatcher and Major years was it not?
From the party that has bought and sold favours from Formula 1 magnates to rich men seeking peerages, cabinet ministers who held shares in companies benefitting from government contracts, cabinet ministers employing their sons from public money for party political work, cabinet minister married to a lawyer specialising in tax avoidance and utilising his skills through mulitple mortgages to evade UK taxes....nothing should surprise us anymore......
I wonder what Kier Hardy would have thought.
it rather puts into perspective a few Tories taking brown envelopes with a few quid in them for a few parliamentary questions and a few others caught shagging their mistresses....
A scandal like this makes me think that maybe 'John Bull' wasn't so far off the mark after all...
Oh dear is there a bit of prejudice showing here? - why does "trade unionist" have to be prefaced by "old-fashioned", or "dinosaur"? Give me an example of a "modern" trade unionist please...
Really manjit, who? Major was naive enough to appoint Kinnock as a Euro Commissioner?
I would hope that if Labour lose the next election, being a Labour party member,donor or even a sympathiser should mean an automatic bar to any publically funded job of any influence at all.
After all, the opposite applies at the moment.
This is just what you expect from Labour.We have had 2 labour speakers on the trot as well and the new BBC chairman is a place man. I think the Tory party should make much much more of this.
The power of patronage is stong.
What a suprise that a Labour government mired in sleaze turns to a Labour Party stalwart to chair the very Committee that has been a thorn in the side of that aforementioned Labour government.
If you do not like being under scrutiny for your behaviour, get one of your own to do the scrutinising. It is the Labour way. This goes beyond mere cronyism. This is the latest conscious effort to subvert attempts to hold the government to account for failing to abide by required standards.
The next Tory government had better ensure it replaces these people with politically independent appointees to show transparency. I also hope to see a very bloody culling of the quangos early on in the next Tory administration.
I agree Iain, this administration grows more squalid day by day. They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Correction: they have learned one thing. They can get away with it.
When are we going to hear a blast on the trumpet from the opposition?I don't mean a few mealy-mouthed mutterings; a full-scale frontal assault on government sleaze and the civil servants who, by their silence, allow it to fester.
Malcolm, but Blair appointed Patten as a EU Commissioner did he not?
Let's be honest whoever is in Government will push their supporters into various posts will they not? Are people seriously suggesting that if Cameron won a General Election he would not use his powers of patronage to place Tory supporters in various quango's etc.
But is there anything wrong with being a member of a political party? Should that be a bar to holding public office?
Anon 4;42 (+:
Anyway whislt we are flinging shit about , I note that The Conservative party will be supporting this bill to give MP's an exemption from the FOI act
Just another example of why they are as unfit to govern as Labour.
The sooner we get rid of the lot of them the better.
If it happens like this more often,we may all get used to it.Now there's a thought.They don't call him teflon Tony for nothing.Banana republic here we come.
anonymous 4.42 and the hitch are one and the same I claim my £5.
Isn't it just party politics ? The slime and sleaze of the reptileans as they slither through public funds and hiss at each other, but inject venom whenever exposed to public gaze
A good but mute point Iain. can we look forward to an era of squeaky clean public figures, come the next Tory government. I have great doubt!! that is not to say that the prospects are dismal, just ever so unlikely.
A Fundamental return to basic honour, integrity and service to country would be most welcome. So cuckoo land doesn't exist, but we can all dream!
'But appointing party supporters to quango's and committee's is not something exclusive to New Labour, it was rife throughout the Thatcher and Major years was it not?'
So that makes it right? Not in my book...Bastards the lot of them
Iain, you missed the story. This is a Gordon Brown glove-puppet appointment.
He wants the next sleaze buster in his pocket to protect him from Smith Institute allegations.
She has published for the Smith Institute
http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/pdfs/partnership.pdf
When Gordon is coronated most of his court will already be in place (e.g Labour's chief fund raiser).
What is your problem Iain? Why are you impugning and disparaging this woman?
Utterly different from the last wallah, and why not?
Is it - vide your wonky analysis of your party's MEP ranking - that you have a problem with women, apart from Baroness Thatcher and her ilk, actually getting on?
I agree with you Iain. How can they get away with what they do and it is very very very worrying.
A few years ago I recall someone saying how a Nazi dictatorship would never work in this country as we (the people) would not allow the introduction of a police-state. Oh how I disagree now.
We are sleep walking into one, granted we are not at the centre yet, but certainly within the city limits!
the problem is how quiet everyone is. The Tories are far too quiet. The Tory sleaze sticker stuck because it was always in the media and Labour were constantly on about it. The Tories need to be far more anti-labour than they are being.
In the words of my old headmaster - "more effort needed"
anonymous:5.40.
You are David Icke and I claim my £5.00.
Sir Alistair Graham was biased against the government. I'm glad he's gone - hopefully the next incumbent will be more even-handed.
Tony's party smears Tory Party using Elvis Party
anonymous:6.22.
I applaud him.Somebody should be biased against this government.
Could the same headline be used to cover the new MEP selection proposals?
Fantasy:Hang their heads in shame.
Reality:Carry on with contempt.
I thought that the whole point of holding political power was the patronage that one can dispense.
Anon 6:18 because the effects of the past fifty years of government policy are finally coming into effect.
Thanks to the miserable education system barely anyone has a clue about Britain's constitutional history or the way our government should work. And so long as the population gets its daily ration of celebrity soft porn and Big Brother barely anyone gives a damn.
For a probable endgame might I suggest a perusal of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire"?
remittance man [10.14 PM] Gibbons' Decline and Fall is directly in point. He explains how the Emperors gradually emasculated all the other elements of the constitution to achieve absolute power and eventually ... Rome fell.
Trumpeter Lanfried - and Britain will also fall. Actually, it's clinging to the cliffside 3/4 way down because the Brits allowed themselves to be browbeaten (alastair campbell and the British press; cartoon rage and the British press - afraid, afraid, afraid that they may end up like Dr David Kelly, R.I.P.)
I'm sorry, but the British have maintained their independence (sauve des les Normandes) because there was a stretch of sea that was dangerous and hard to navigate.
No longer. Now the invaders simply fly in, bringing not only primitive social habits and bad breeding habits leading to defective genes, but a primitive belief system with which they intend to threaten our Christian society. And La Manche being no longer formidable, the continent of Europe is subsuming our country, thanks to one stroke of the pen of repulsive, sleazy Edward Heath.
Our constitution was meant for our islands, but our islands are islands no more. Just little outlying pieces of land. Our ancient laws, guaranteeing our rights, have been subsumed. The vile Tony Blair hastens the process in the hope of preferment.
Should you ever recover any control over your own destiny, even for one week or for 24 hours, you must embed a law giving the right of British citizens to bear arms to defend against an over mighty government - which now means not just our own Britain, but the vast machinery of the EUSSR.
But you won't.
Instead of dreams about the right to bear arms, how about a written constitution and a 75% majority to change it?
Fra more sensible.. so it will never happen.
It ill becomes the Cons to throw stones here: remember salmonella and BSE: a Government which ignored reality?
All politicians in the last 20 years in power have abused it...
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