Incredulity, that's what did it. Sir Compton promised himself back in June - and for the umpteenth time - that there would be no more blogging but, honestly, these bloody EU chaps ... they'd wake the dead. Baroness Ashton (who?) of Upholland (where?)*
In what sense can it possibly be good for democracy that someone who has never been elected to anything is the EU foreign affairs emissary? Half a billion electors in 27 nations get no say while 27 heads of government stitch up a deal?
At least it wasn't Blair/Miliband.
Actually, Lady Ashton is probably quite good from the point of view of an incoming Tory govt since, as a total non entity, she can be safely ignored and will spend her five years in office going to asparagus and sea bass lunches and being given boring things to do by Paris and Berlin.
* She is Kathy Ashton, BSc social work, married to Peter Kelner, chairman of YouGov, was born in Upholland, Lancs - the only point in her favour as far as Sir Compton can make out - and has been a longtime Labour crony, leader in the Lords and EU trade commissioner but, I say again, HAS NEVER BEEN ELECTED TO ANYTHING. God help us.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Statins 'cut risk of dying by more than a tenth'
This is just plain misleading, even if it is in headline shorthand. On the other hand, if you sell statins for a living, it's just about the best free hit ever - take our product and you might not die. Blimey.
Ed Balls: delusional bully, liar & failure
I know I keep droning about this guy but he really a danger to the nation. Where are those Jack Straw preventative detention orders for sociopaths when you need them? This is from The Spectator Coffee House today and is a complete defence to challenges on the points made above.
A number of things stand out.
1) The Brownite classic tactic of "I'm right, you're wrong and you simply cannot say this about me."
2) Since when do members of the executive say what can and cannot be written in the public prints and on websites?
3) A spasmodic reaction without thought of the consequences, ie exposure and being rendered - what, again? - a laughing stock.
4) The sinister threat that "people will really know what sort of an magazine you are". They already do...
5) ... and the failure to understand that they also already know what sort of politician you are.
6) Intimidation ... rule number one in the Brown Playbook.
There are 100s of others that might be listed. This is the sort of man who in the Vietman War would have been shot by his own troops, the sort of man who fired on those of his own troops when they cowered or hesitated, the sort of man who will lie and twist and browbeat and deceive because he has nothing good to say. The sort of man who knows that his time is running out and would rather go for broke and make as much mess as possible. Yes, the sort of man who trashes a house shortly before it is repossessed.
Will we ever hear an admission that he got it wrong? No. But we might hear him say that he was just following orders.
===
Oh, I do feel better after that.
A number of things stand out.
1) The Brownite classic tactic of "I'm right, you're wrong and you simply cannot say this about me."
2) Since when do members of the executive say what can and cannot be written in the public prints and on websites?
3) A spasmodic reaction without thought of the consequences, ie exposure and being rendered - what, again? - a laughing stock.
4) The sinister threat that "people will really know what sort of an magazine you are". They already do...
5) ... and the failure to understand that they also already know what sort of politician you are.
6) Intimidation ... rule number one in the Brown Playbook.
There are 100s of others that might be listed. This is the sort of man who in the Vietman War would have been shot by his own troops, the sort of man who fired on those of his own troops when they cowered or hesitated, the sort of man who will lie and twist and browbeat and deceive because he has nothing good to say. The sort of man who knows that his time is running out and would rather go for broke and make as much mess as possible. Yes, the sort of man who trashes a house shortly before it is repossessed.
Will we ever hear an admission that he got it wrong? No. But we might hear him say that he was just following orders.
===
Oh, I do feel better after that.
Bitmore Athletic
To Bupa at Canary Wharf yesterday for the company medical, which was not quite the ghastly experience anticpated. The last time I submitted to one of these things, they tried to frighten me with a follow-up appointment at a cardiologist's rooms in Wimpole St. He took his fee and told me what I already knew: "You eat too much, especially too much dairy fat, and you're bone bloody idle." That was three years and many, many dinners ago.This time, a pleasant surprise. Weight and blood pressure down - the BP actually in the safe zone - no sign of anything nasty in urine or other samples, lung age corresponds more or less to actual age, no sign of prostate playing up, eyes, hearing, teeth good, ECG good.
Three cheers then? Well, no. Two. Still overweight and all is concentrated on my waist. This elevates the risk of diabetes, though from 1/100 to 1/25. The answer is to be a bit more athletic, which means doing a bit more walking and doing it a bit more briskly. Swimming also maybe. Ought really to get weight comfortably under 90 kilos, so about 6 to 8 to shed.
The only thing worthy of a ticking off were triglycerides in the blood stream and the doc said dairy fat and processed meat have pretty much to be cut out and to go easy on olive oil in cooking. Miserable, but what is the alternative?
The same old story: eat less, move more.
Monday, 29 June 2009
Surprise!
1) Ed Balls admits that he is in touch with McBride.
2) Peter Mandelson says the Spending Review won't take place until the election.
3) Most politicians think the voters are fucking simpltons with the memory span of a goldfish.
2) Peter Mandelson says the Spending Review won't take place until the election.
3) Most politicians think the voters are fucking simpltons with the memory span of a goldfish.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Question time
A letter from the Huntingdon Constituency Conservative Association inviting me to a special general meeting where Jonathan Djanogly will take questions over his expenses. The date is July 9 and since I shall be at work I shall have to forgo the pleasure of an evening train ride to Huntingdon - actually a packed and sweaty sardine special from King's Cross - and a walk to the high street and the Commemoration Hall. But I should think quite a few people will go.
Mr Djanogly has claimed £5,000 for stout gates at his house. Fair enough. He wants to keep out those Huntingdon Life Sciences troublemakers not presently detained at her majesty's pleasure. He claimed for a few other things too but, as with all other MPs in trouble on this issue, it is the small items that cause the difficulty. In Mr Djanogly's case, he claimed for equipment to make jam, £47 in total. I may have given a lower figure in an earlier post and apologise for misleading my reader.
He is a wealthy man from a wealthy background, the son of noted philanthropists (who must be, or ought to be, deeply ashamed) and so my question would be phrased thus: "Mr Djanogly, could you explain to us not why you claimed for jam-making equipment, but why you thought it seemly to do so?"
Jam-making equipment would not help him to represent his constituents, though maybe it was for some enterprise to do with his role as a shadow business spokesman. If the jam was to be sold at a constituency shindig, then the claim surely amounts to laundering taxpayers' money into the constituency coffers. If he flutters his hands and says an aide submitted the claim without his knowing anything about it well, honestly, the oldest trick in the book. If there is just obfuscation and dissembling - because, of course, there is no sense in which it could possibly be seemly to claim for such trifles when your constituents are in no position to do so - then those present will conclude that he has displayed a total lack of judgment, doesn't know right from wrong.
The next step would be to consider whether they want someone with such poor or absent judgment as their MP, and since I no longer live in the constituency I leave it to them to decide, though I know what I'd do with him. I expect he'll be all right, but there will have to be some serious grovelling and begging for forgiveness in front of those who do turn out on Thursday week. The best he can hope for is to draw a line under it, begin to move on. After all, here is a man who had every expectation of a ministerial career. He has only been an opposition MP, and mostly a pipsqueak backbencher, never heard of from one term to the next. Can Mr Cameron elevate him in future? Possibly I suppose, but those pots of jam have left a nasty mark on his reputation.
Meanwhile, Sir Compton will shrug his shoulders, tut tut a bit and hope for better. We certainly deserve better.
===
In the same subject area, Nick Robinson did a talk on the wireless at 1.30pm today about the expenses crises. He interviewed Will "Thirsty" Lewis, asbestos-coated editor of The Daily Telegraph. I have been fiercely critical of him in the past, hating all the horrible things he has presided over at the once-greatest-newspaper-in-the-world, but overall the DT did right to break the story, even if there were some unfairnesses in the way they did it. Mr Thirsty is right to say that this rotten, fetid parliament needs cleaning out, and cleaned out is what it will be. The real eye-popping thing though was the revelation of a 45-minute phone call from Gordy McDebt to Will, during which the caller was quite unrestrained. That's a great one for the memoirs.
Mr Djanogly has claimed £5,000 for stout gates at his house. Fair enough. He wants to keep out those Huntingdon Life Sciences troublemakers not presently detained at her majesty's pleasure. He claimed for a few other things too but, as with all other MPs in trouble on this issue, it is the small items that cause the difficulty. In Mr Djanogly's case, he claimed for equipment to make jam, £47 in total. I may have given a lower figure in an earlier post and apologise for misleading my reader.
He is a wealthy man from a wealthy background, the son of noted philanthropists (who must be, or ought to be, deeply ashamed) and so my question would be phrased thus: "Mr Djanogly, could you explain to us not why you claimed for jam-making equipment, but why you thought it seemly to do so?"
Jam-making equipment would not help him to represent his constituents, though maybe it was for some enterprise to do with his role as a shadow business spokesman. If the jam was to be sold at a constituency shindig, then the claim surely amounts to laundering taxpayers' money into the constituency coffers. If he flutters his hands and says an aide submitted the claim without his knowing anything about it well, honestly, the oldest trick in the book. If there is just obfuscation and dissembling - because, of course, there is no sense in which it could possibly be seemly to claim for such trifles when your constituents are in no position to do so - then those present will conclude that he has displayed a total lack of judgment, doesn't know right from wrong.
The next step would be to consider whether they want someone with such poor or absent judgment as their MP, and since I no longer live in the constituency I leave it to them to decide, though I know what I'd do with him. I expect he'll be all right, but there will have to be some serious grovelling and begging for forgiveness in front of those who do turn out on Thursday week. The best he can hope for is to draw a line under it, begin to move on. After all, here is a man who had every expectation of a ministerial career. He has only been an opposition MP, and mostly a pipsqueak backbencher, never heard of from one term to the next. Can Mr Cameron elevate him in future? Possibly I suppose, but those pots of jam have left a nasty mark on his reputation.
Meanwhile, Sir Compton will shrug his shoulders, tut tut a bit and hope for better. We certainly deserve better.
===
In the same subject area, Nick Robinson did a talk on the wireless at 1.30pm today about the expenses crises. He interviewed Will "Thirsty" Lewis, asbestos-coated editor of The Daily Telegraph. I have been fiercely critical of him in the past, hating all the horrible things he has presided over at the once-greatest-newspaper-in-the-world, but overall the DT did right to break the story, even if there were some unfairnesses in the way they did it. Mr Thirsty is right to say that this rotten, fetid parliament needs cleaning out, and cleaned out is what it will be. The real eye-popping thing though was the revelation of a 45-minute phone call from Gordy McDebt to Will, during which the caller was quite unrestrained. That's a great one for the memoirs.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Scenes from the Downing St bunker #23
Brooding, sighing, the Father of the Nation stares into his computer screen before casually, languidly flinging a TV remote at a Civil Service minion who had just whispered bad news about tractor production on the M4 corridor.
Nigel Sincerity, Secretary of State for the Department of Clinging at Straws, approaches cautiously, not thinking it at all unusual to be wearing a cricket box and ice hockey goalkeeper's helmet in the office.
"Prime Minister, we ought really to make some announcement about the by-elections in Glasgow and Norwich. It has been some time since Speaker Martin and Dr Gibson announced their intentions. The voters will be getting restive, thinking we're not serious about democracy or keen to follow through on the expenses scandal, capitalise on it, politically I mean."
The brooding head turns, the greying curlings flicking maniacally, and its good eye swivels and sets on the hapless tribune. "Fuck the voters. What the hell does it have to do with them anyway?"
Fade to black.
Nigel Sincerity, Secretary of State for the Department of Clinging at Straws, approaches cautiously, not thinking it at all unusual to be wearing a cricket box and ice hockey goalkeeper's helmet in the office.
"Prime Minister, we ought really to make some announcement about the by-elections in Glasgow and Norwich. It has been some time since Speaker Martin and Dr Gibson announced their intentions. The voters will be getting restive, thinking we're not serious about democracy or keen to follow through on the expenses scandal, capitalise on it, politically I mean."
The brooding head turns, the greying curlings flicking maniacally, and its good eye swivels and sets on the hapless tribune. "Fuck the voters. What the hell does it have to do with them anyway?"
Fade to black.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)