Enjoy the ‘Sound of Stupidity’ now at a computer near you. Enjoy the worst ever political video of all time! See Peter Hain’s ‘Obama moment’ in full technicolour! See the flying Pig. Roll up Roll up!
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See it again … and again … and again – HERE
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So we, the taxpayers, paid £10,000 to have Mr.Blair’s kitchen refurbished and for Mr.Oaten to have a new bed (too much information). MP’s (and of course AM’s iPods as well) expenses are a perennial issue that crops up again and again.
It’s not so much the amounts (we paid £6,500 for the now defunct MFI to do our kitchen) that are involved than the principles or rather lack of them that grates. As the campaigner of Unlock Democracy Paul Facey has said below:
Unlock Democracy director Paul Facey said so far protests against the proposed FOI exemption had been largely restricted to what he termed “the civil liberties fraternity”.
But he was confident many ordinary voters would join the campaign, thanks to the power of the internet.
Mr Facey added: “I challenge senior MPs and leaders of all political parties to say where they stand and oppose this idea.
“The politicians must realise that by behaving so cynically, they will cause great damage to the reputation of Parliament.”
The reputation of our politicians is critical to a stable society. Without a political class seen to be ‘more or less’ representing the people and not ripping them off by having their ‘noses in the trough’, then all bets are off on widespread civil disobedience. Examples have been set.
Like a three legged stool, there are three pillars that hold society aloft : the financial system, the political system and the police/judiciary. If even one of these legs crumbles then the stool of society falls over. Throughout history politicians have had variable morals but the parliamentary system has contained them. There are clear worrying signs that Parliament is under attack and the normal checks and balances eroded. The Labour government has alot to answer for.
In a potential disaster for those of us that believe that Wales should become a self determining, self governing, devolved, ‘Nation once again’ (from the song by the Wolfe Tones) comes the news that NuLabour wants to sell off 14% of the entire landmass of our beautiful land in order to pay for their mismanagement of the UK economy.
The three (organisations) which are going to have a big effect on Wales are privatisation of the Royal Mint, which is currently in Llantrisant, the DVLA the major employer in the Swansea area and the Forestry commission.
Privatising the Forestry commission is a matter of particular concern. One out of every seven acres of the surface of Wales is owned by the Commission, the idea that Mr Darling could sell 14% of our country to private investors who may have little or no interest in our country is sobering, the thought that one seventh of our country could be owned by a Russian oligarch or a huge multinational with its headquarters half way around the world by this time next year is frightening. The fact that most of our elected politicians seem have ignored this issue is scandalous.
When you add to this the facts that most of the water and all that swims in our rivers, lakes and reservoirs is already in privatisated hands and even the air that we breathe is used by massive privately owned windfarms that despoil the landscape and export all their power generation (little as it is) to the National Grid, then you have to begin to wonder. What is left?
That a Labour government whose very roots and soul were formed in the political furnace of industrial South Wales should be responsible for this is beyond credulity. Mr.Rhodri Morgan, if all of this is sold off, you will no longer be able to walk on Llangrannog beach on your jollydays, firstly because you won’t be welcome and secondly because you will have to pay for the privilege and have sufficient points on your Tesco card – every little helps.
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The announcement on the board about the business scheduled for the Assembly briefing room was amusing – to cynical journalists – but also, as it turned out, completely misleading.
“Welsh Lib Dem” said the board, which sparked jokes about how small the party had recently grown.
But the gist of the press briefing was just the opposite – it was about how a party holding only one council seat in eight in Wales was able wheedle its way onto the cabinets of fully half the Welsh local authorities.
The Lib Dems hold 156 out of 1,264 seats, and yet they sit in 11 of the 22 cabinets, or similar. A trifle like Labour’s Militant Tendency of old, but far more successful.
The party performs this trick without “controlling” (ie, possessing a majority of seats) on a single authority. The National Assembly’s extremely handy Local Elections Guide 2008 lists the Lib Dems as the hardly-rans compared with the other parties (the “control” table); but then that Guide doesn’t total up cabinet seats; and neither does it total how many councils is “led” by each party (ie, who supplies the council leader”).
One of the few councils the Lib Dems most regret not having a say in is Torfaen; the result there was perhaps the biggest shock in last May’s elections - Labour hung onto control only through the assistance of the tiny Plaid Cymru group.
But the Lib Dems got their own back on Plaid in Carmarthenshire. The document written by party officials and presented to the press today states that the council is “in administration” – which is not that it is bankrupt, but that the Lib Dems are “part of the administration”. In fact, Carms could be said to be a Lib Dem failure; their single councillor votes with the controlling Independents, but has been given no seat in the cabinet.
It seems as if the Lib Dems centrally before the election pushed on all their federal parties and affiliates to follow a candidates’ policy which aims to get a core of good, able people elected on each council, who could then work towards gaining leadership on the authority through a seat in the cabinet. Continue reading »
Good on yer Neil – keep up the prattle!
So, former Labour leader Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty, describes the conduct of the growing band of critics of Prime Minister Gordon Brown as “infantile”, and which looks set to tear the party apart, adding for good measure: “In politics amnesia is a killer disease“.
Bizarre then that the ginger-fringed ‘People’s Aristo’, keystone of the multi-million Euro Kinnock family industry, fails to remember his own infantile behaviour during his ill-fated tenure of the top Labour job back in the 1980s. Then, you will remember, he scored a number of spectacular own goals which led to his party’s sojourn in the political wilderness for nigh on two decades.
Who can forget his simian whooping and grunting at the close of one of the most embarrassing party conferences ever, or the excruciating eve-of-poll television broadcast, featuring a clifftop walk arm-in-arm with a grinning Glenys which nearly resulted in the ginger-whinger plunging to a grisly death on the rocks below.
Kinnocchio has also conveniently forgotten how he broke ranks with the party over the issue of devolution in 1979. When it was official Labour policy to support devolution for Wales, his Lordship led the campaign to oppose it thus condemning Wales to two more decades of poverty and the crippling effects of Thatcherite economic policy. But then, in politics, amnesia, we are told, is a killer disease – for which one presumes, by definition, there is no cure.
The puissant and noble lord goes on to talk, with that inimitable verbose windbaggery, of the “awful cost …inflicted on the Labour Party and the British people” by Labour’s internal battles. The British people were mercifully spared rule by the acquisitive and ambitious Kinnock dynasty, but has had, nevertheless, to suffer a not too dissimilar fate for the last decade.
In the opinion of many in Wales, Kinnock, more than any other ‘Welsh’ politician in the last three decades has managed to expose our nation to ridicule and opprobrium. Remember The Sun’s 1992 pre-election headline: ‘IF KINNOCK WINS TODAY, WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE BRITAIN PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS’? Remember Tony Blair’s “F***ing Welsh” outburst? Just who, one wonders, did Tone really have in mind?
What will do far more damage to the already free-falling Labour movement than a bit of internal jostling is the interference of this grinning buffoon. Incidentally, Kinnock’s recent endorsement of ‘his great friend’ Democratic Vice-Presidential hopeful Joe Biden ought surely to have set the alarm bells jangling in the Obama camp.
So c’mon on Neil baby! Keep on sockin’ it to ‘em! YEEEEHAWRRIGHT!
Byline: Cuneglas
Bloggers can be so cruel! Not for those of a nervous or Labour disposition.
The last days of Gordon Brown skit
Hat tip: Guido Fawkes
All out attack on GB by Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail… HERE . This is contempt taken to the next level. If anyone wrote this about me I’d go after them with a gun! What’s the matter with GB? Has he no cojones?
The imminent death of the Labour Party in Wales and demise of Gordon Brown’s career is due to a lemming-like lack of understanding of human psychology and history. To put it crudely, they have failed to properly use the well known tools of mind control at their disposal. Even though these days we have an essentially professional (and well paid) political class, they have not done their homework. They need retraining and this can only now be done in opposition.
People really resent having to think about or worry about ‘political matters’ when they have other things to contend with like bringing up a family, fighting a war or earning a living. After all, we elect and pay people handsomely to deal with this for us. This resentment surfaces in the form of a hardening of negative opinion even in the face of positive news. Thus, no matter what good things Gordon Brown or New Labour accomplish now (and there are many), it will be twisted to reflect people’s skeptical attitude -sometimes based on a very simplistic view of the world such as the price of diesel. The Glasgow East by election has also shown that people, regardless of economic circumstance, vote in a psychologically predictable way. It is not the issues or the economy stupid… it is the psychological perceptions of the politicians themselves and a gambling bet on if they can handle the issues. Continue reading »
Today’s High Court judgement in favour of ‘proud Welsh and Punjabi Sikh’ schoolgirl Sarika Singh, banned by the governors of Aberdare Girls’ Comprehensive School from wearing the Kara, a wrist bangle and a traditional Sikh religious symbol, is another ‘one in the eye’ for New Labour’s sense of Britishness.
The ‘Britishness’ agenda, dreamt up by Gordon Brown’s spin machine is designed to bolster a rapidly evaporating sense of British identity and is specifically aimed at trying to combat the growing sense of national identity in Wales and Scotland. Measures proposed by the unfortunate former Home Secretary David Blunkett and more recently by Brown himself include compulsory English language tests for immigrants and bizarre ceremonies involving the swearing fealty to the English crown on an altar draped in the union flag.
In 2007 Miss Singh of Cwmbach near Aberdare, refused to remove her bangle at the behest of Aberdare Girls’ School officials (school motto ‘Oni Heuir Ni Fedir’ -’Unless you sow, you shall not reap’) and was subsequently ‘permanently excluded’ from the school.
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