Pot, Kettle, Black, Mr Major?
Incredible news I woke up to this morning that John Major is accusing the current Government of "systematic sleaze".No, seriously.
You couldn't make it up, could you?
Surely if anyone should know about systematic sleaze in Government it's Mr. Major - but of course his reign in the 1990s was completely different.
Major acknowledged that "lots of people misbehaved" when he was prime minister, but said they did so as individuals rather than members of the government. It was not institutional sleaze, he said.
Cash for Questions? Back to Basics? His sleeping with Edwina Currie?
OK, Maastrict that's completely different from the European Reform Treaty situation. And Black Wednesday was just a total innocent cock up. I'm right behind you John, why don't you run for leader again?*
Of course John Major was the son of Mr Major-Balls.
Major-Balls then, major balls now.
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(Photo Source: Ruddyell, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:John_Major_1996.jpg)
(*Just for those political editors who have taken my comments literally over the last couple of weeks, I am joking. OK? Also, for info, I am not a supporter of the campaign group north or south of the border and have never urged anyone to stand against the current leaders. You need to employ better researchers. Thanks.)
Labels: Back To Basics, John Major, sleaze
posted by Kerron @ 1:01 PM
22 Comments:
Word! I thought the same when I heard this. Remember his "we must get back to family values" line and then we found out in amongst all the sordid details, that he'd been sharing a bath with that gargoyle!
Oh well the cricket season starts in April and he'll disappear back to the Oval.
I'm only a Lib Dem, so I probably don't count. But I have to say that the Tories' incompetence, which certainly reached its peak under JM, was just a pale shadow of that of the useless cretins who are in power now. I think I could do a better job myself, and I am a complete idiot (which probably means you may disregard this post. Hmmm).
But the Labour sleaze has been so much more serious and much closer to corruption Kerron. Just one example is using £10 million of taxpayers monies to fund Trades Unions "modernisation" which allowed them to pay it back as a contribution to the Labour party. Neither do I remember the Foreign Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney General and Home Secretary all having affairs during the Major years. The Labour Party is corrupt and incompetent on a scale not seen before in British politics.
So the point you've made rather wellm Kerron, is that John Major knows sleaze when he sees it.
Apparently John Major sees sleaze.
Most other people in the country also see it.
What's your excuse?
Nick Colbourne: "Remember his "we must get back to family values" line"
Err.. how can you remember a line he never uttered?
The difference between Tory and Labour sleaze is that the latter are better at covering up.
Good old Charlie could always find a safe establishment figure (like Hutton)to do a whitewash job and save Blair's bacon. They're trying to do the same thing now with the Abrahams dodgy loans scandal.
annon - suggestions union sleaze
I think you will find that the Tories paid more in trade union education/ballots than Labour did
You make the mistake of suggesting all unions are affiliated to Labour - most are not
You will find most Western European governments fund trade unions
unlike of course the estimate £2.5bn Tories funding of PFI companies and contracing out of companies to companies who donated to the Tories
Sad, really sad. This is someone whose website portrays himself as "Labour's number 1 political blogger". (Powerful stuff, for virtual foreigners like me)
He says he was a school governor for four years, and has for several years been a senior parliamentary assistant for Labour.
Yet he can't write English: ("Incredible news I woke up this morning that.."
This is yet another example of incompetence, a disregard for basic skill and precision that children and adults are being asked to accept as normal in this country.
We read about the enormous sums being pumped into education by this government, and it's quite disheartening to see the result -- especially when it comes to former school governors?
It's hard to contest claims that a lot of that so-called "investment" is wasted as it works through the system...
Labour had more corruption each year than the whole previous administration.
I suggest you need to take your head out of the sand Kerron. Labour corruption is vast, and far reaching. Many ministers of state and senior members of the party are implicated, as are both prime ministers. It is far, far worse than anything under Major, and has been for 10 years.
It has done huge damage, yet Labour fail to accept it and admit it in the way the Conservatives did. When they are caught breaking the law (not the "rules", the law) they somehow think that they need to have an investigation into party funding, as if the laws are wrong or as if everyone is up to it. No, they need to stop breaking the laws they have.
Ah Kerron - great words from a member of our new ruling class. At least JM had a bit of a career before political life whereas you (from your brief biog.) appear never to have had a real job ergo that makes you supemely qualified to become a member of Ed Balls cabinet...
P.S. I did start to list the corruption. However even to list the names was too long, and I can't remember nearly all of them. To actually say the true depth of the corruption involved would have been ridiculous.
I can illustrate with one case, which is Peter Mandelson's loan. Most people never followed closely enough to know the true depth of the scandal. Mandelson's department was supposed to be investigating Transtec, George Robinson's company. The company subsequently collapsed (my father had shares, which is why I know what happened). Robinson had not only bribed Mandelson but used company funds to entertain Labour members up to and including Brown and Blair, in a very similar way to Conrad Blacks actions which are leading to his imprisonment.
The corruption of the whole Labour Party by the loan money (in Mandelson's case) and this money used for entertainment (for the rest of Labour, and that money wasn't even his!) meant that he was not properly investigated. The Labour Party used government for their own ends, which has been a theme since 1997.
This was a far deeper scandal than the media ever suggested. The government should have fallen!
dame shirley porter (homes for votes), BSE, pensioners freezing to death, cecil parkinson and all those other politicians who had affairs and babies out of wedlock with other women than their wives but who also cut benefits to single mothers and lone parents on the grounds that people should not have babies out of wedlock or affairs with women other than their wives, cash-for-questions etc etc etc
am sure we could come up with a list of equal length.
we could turn our backs on politics and wish a pox on all their houses but one party has delivered a minimum wage, provision for family-friendly working, Educational Maintenance Allowance for poorer students to go to college and many other such policies which improve the lot of ordinary families.
The list is nowhere near as long. I have challenged Labour supporters in the past on this, and they could not come up with a quarter of the number of names, and almost all the cases were far less corrupt.
Look at yours. You are really struggling when you come up with sexual demeanours. I wasn't even counting those, although Labour has had plenty!
The government is gerrymandering on a far greater scale than Dame Porter was ever accused of. What she did was going on anyway in councils of all colours.
Is having an affair sleaze? I hope not.
fact is I think that honours are about even on the sleaze front.
One of the most interesting bits of the major comments is that if things go wrong for Northern Rock the losses to the public purse would make Black Wednesday seem like they lost a bit of small change.
"Is having an affair sleaze? I hope not."
Does this tell you all you need to know about the modern day Tories? :-/
BTW, if the Tories admit they wouldn't have done anything differently on Northern Rock - essentially because no-one wants to see a collapse of the banking industry in the UK - then how can you get on your high horse on this issue?
And are you saying that the collapse of Northern Rock was down to Government "sleaze"? Just mad.
Labour came in on an anti sleaze ticket, introduced legislation to prevent it and promptly (at best) ignored and (at worst) deliberately broke their own rules. From the top to the bottom of the party it doesn't get much more sleazy than that.
Whereas the Tories have never been anti-sleaze and have never done anything to legislate it, so they can behave exactly how they like?
Genius. :-/
I suppose that technically Major could protest that his own affair was an 'individual' rather than a 'governmental' misdemeanour. But there are other cases, most notably I think over the arms-to-Iraq/Scott Report debate, where the abuse of power went right to the heart of his government.
ASHCROFT
Just how much money did the Tories get from private companies they gave contracts to clean (sic) our hospitals to ???
and how many patients have died as a result !!!
oh and now david cameron's constituency party, witney, made a donation's "genuine mistake" which of course is very different from 'systemic sleaze' as theorised by Sir John Major-Balls.
we could go on ad infinitum splitting methodological hairs as to what constitutes authentic/core/real/fundamental/systemic sleaze. This is a distraction. Let's get back to policies.
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