With Liebour – and especially “Welsh” Liebour – in meltdown, Gordon Brown has chosen the time of his latest (and probably last) cabinet “reshuffle” to punish the Welsh (“the f*****g Welsh” to use his predecessor Tony Blair’s words). Out goes lugubrious, maladroit Welsh Secretary Paul ‘Spudface’ Murphy. Back comes disgraced Orange-skinned Lounge Lizard Peter Vain, originally parachuted in to take over one of Liebour’s safest seats, Neath, one of those “if-you-put-a-monkey-up” constituencies which have held back Wales’s progress for so many decades.
Some like it hot!
Vain returns to the now largely superfluous post, still badly tainted with sleaze, not just because of the scandal over hidden contributions to his disastrous campaign for the party’s deputy-leadership, but over his ‘new wife, new home, new shed roof’ parliamentary expenses.
Vain, The Daily Telegraph revealed, charged the taxpayer for a new tin roof for his ‘log store’ and asked if he could claim “the mortgage interest on a £440,000 new home which be bought with his second wife Elizabeth Hayward in 2004 – as well as claiming for his former home six miles away.”
Lucky for some, but not for many in Neath, one of the most economically depressed parts of Wales. Keeping the homes at a temperature appropriate to one with so profound a tan and lifestyle to match cost us in excess of £6,000 in heating oil in just over two years. Phew! We all know some like it hot, but 25 degrees right round the clock?
New Welsh Gauleiter a danger to democracy
Seriously though, with devolution the role of Secretary of State for Wales is – and should be -largely superfluous, there’s a nasty sting in the tail. What is dangerous for democracy in Wales is that Vain will in all probability abuse his role as Welsh Gauleiter by clipping the wings of the powers of the National Assembly. He threatened to do so before until scandal floored him. He will do this by obstructing the progress of LCOs in Westminster and ensuring that the acquisition of further powers by the Senedd are consistently impeded and frustrated.
The vast majority of Liebour’s Welsh MPs are recalcitrant dinosaurs wholly opposed to any further transference of power to Cardiff. They will shortly be fighting for their political lives, but, as we will soon see, London’s new Gauleiter and his cronies will try and inflict the maximum possible damage to Welsh devolution on their way down. And out.
Glenys’s new first class seat on the gravy train
Gordo’s other act of spite is the appointment of Anglesey Fishwife Glenys Kinnock as Minister for Europe. It just goes to show that a combination of mediocrity, failure and extravagant gravytraining – with a solid measure of anti-Welshness thrown in – are what get you results in the Liebour menagerie. Five times round the world Glen, (127,465 air miles and counting) who received one of the highest expenses allowances in the European Parliament, was rated 71 out of a total of 78 in the Taxpayers’ Alliance evaluation of ‘best value’ MEP in the UK, which rather puts things into perspective. Despite supposedly representing Welsh electors, she failed to mention the need of he constituents once in all her years as an MEP but instead used her time in Brussels to pursue a bizarre hotchpotch of issues (“ishoos”), causes and personal obsessions which had nothing whatsoever to do with her remit.
Referring to La Kinnock and her sidekick Eluned Morgan (TA ‘best value’ rating 66 out of 78) a Cambriapolitico correspondent commented last week: “Thank God these freeloading swindlers have left the stage – hopefully for good.” No such luck. Brown has “elevated” the Fishwife to the House of Lords to replace Caroline Flint as European Minister, where she can sit next to hubby Neil, and, yes you’ve got it, carry on milking the system as never before. Minister for Europe? Attendance allowances, housing allowances, entertainment allowances, pensions, golden handshakes, junkets, jets and jollys…. all over again. And best of all, no nasty voters to wise up to your tricks!
At least from his personal point of view Gordo’s made one wise move in an otherwise capricious and dangerous environment. With a bottomless expense account like this, good time Glen’s never going to stab him in the back, and unlike Caroline Flint she’s definitely not fit to be put in the window. Ach y fi!
