Sleaze

Did the Tories just threaten the BBC over Ashcroft?

Election Skullduggery, Sleaze, Tories, UK elections
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It certainly seems so, if this is to be believed:

Gove did a decent job fielding Jon Snow’s questions and then beetled over to the BBC to face Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark. Gove’s tactic was to keep repeating that the other main parties were bankrolled by men with equally poor senses of civic duty and ignore Wark’s point that Ashcroft’s role as deputy chairman made his case different. Then, at the end, Gove went on to the attack.

“We’ll be watching, Kirsty,” he said darkly (although it’s not as if he ever sounds like Bagpuss) and then, in a significant tone: “The broader question will be, ‘Is the BBC failing in its duty to hold other parties to account?'”, leaving Wark to wrap up the interview in a fluster ill-concealed by a pretence of being hurried. Maybe she had the director general screaming in her earpiece: “Tell him we’ll get rid of CBeebies if he’ll just leave us alone!”

In completely unrelated news, new polls show that Labour is now level with the Tories in marginal seats, despite the Tories’ strategy of targetting these must-win seats for the next election. The mastermind behind this strategy? Ashcroft…

On an even more unrelated note, did it really take ten years for anybody to notice Ashcroft was still a non-dom, after having promised to start paying taex if only he could be a lord? Realy? And do we think that’s due to incompetence or malice?

Comment of The Day: Redacted Holiday Fun

Sleaze, UK politics
Published on

From The Guardian comments pages –

UpsideDownCakeEater
19 Jun 09, 1:02am (about 6 hours ago)

Seen the claim from the PM and the Speaker when both attended ████████ in █████████ paying £ ███.██ just to watch two █████████. Both claimed £ ████.██ as though they actively took part ?
Shocking.

What’s █████████ ? We might well ask.

If it weren’t for the Daily Telegraph’s uncensored leaks, for all we’d know of it █████████ could have been anything, from a Harrods rocking horse to a box of man-size Pampers to an Agent Provocateur gimp mask.

At least if you’re on holiday and it rains this week there’s no need to be bored; you can always play redaction bingo and insert your own words. All those blacked out spaces leave lots of scope for the imagination and reading censored expenses claims is much more entertaining that way. Holiday fun for all the family!

How Many Bad Apples Can One Barrel Hold?

Policing, Sleaze
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Unlimited amounts, apparently:

More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards, the Observer can disclose.

Auditors who have examined the American Express accounts of 3,500 officers involved in countering terrorism and organised crime have reported almost one in 11 detectives to the Metropolitan Police’s internal investigators.

A senior officer appears to have spent £40,000 on his Amex card in one year, without authorisation. Items bought by others without permission include suits, women’s clothing and fishing rods.

[…]

Sources have told the Observer that some detectives had fallen into the habit of withdrawing hundreds of pounds at a time from cashpoints. Other officers appear to have filled in blank receipts from restaurants to account for cash payments.

And that’s only tip of the iceberg. The slightly less blatantly corrupt emerge unscathed :

Only detectives suspected of overcharging by more than £1,000 have been referred to the DPS. Its investigators are believed to be examining hundreds of files.

What’s really shocking is that this news isn’t today’s main headline or even a subsidiary one. It barely even made the front page.

What about Tessa Jowell?

Corruption, New Labour, Sleaze
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No bribes here...

Alex remembers some inconvenient facts:

A question, though. Tessa Jowell is Secretary of State for the Cabinet Office as of last night. Really? Blears bites the dust for using taxpayers’ money to speculate in property while avoiding capital-gains tax; has everyone forgotten that Jowell did much the same, but with the crucial distinction that she used money paid to her husband as a bribe by the mafia, in the person of Silvio Berlusconi. I believe I was first on this story in December 2005; I’m going to be the last off it.

Because, to resounding silence in the UK, David Mills was convicted by the Italian courts a couple of months ago of corruptly accepting the money from il cavaliere. This is Italy, so it is unlikely he will be punished in any way. Yes, she suddenly discovered irreparable cracks in their marriage, rather in the way that the RAF suddenly discovered them in the Nimrod MR2s, and kicked him out of the door. But I am not aware that she renounced any of the profit involved.

But but, why should she pay back this money? It’s not as if she stole it from British taxpayers, now did she?

Though what David Mills was convicted for back in February was much more serious than the various petty enrichments which have ended the career of so many deserving Labour and Tory bigwigs, the problem is that it just doesn’t fit the story’s template. Some fucker claiming thousands of pounds for a duck island is easily explained, but to delve into what’s ancient history, get the facts right and explain them to your readers, while staying clear of the libel laws is just too complicated. Anyhow it was in another country and besides the wench was dead.

On a more cynical level, the David Mills story is also much more dangerous to the political and financial elites in the UK. Venal and grasping MPs only out for what they can get and fuck the country are almost expected: what shocks us is just how much they have their snouts in the trough. But Mills was a high class lawyer and husband to an important minister and here he was having taken bribes from Berlusconi, somebody as Alex says only one step away from the Mafia at best. He took these bribes in the nineties, but was only caught out in 2005; what has he been up to in the meantime, how much did his wife know and how much was she involved. More important: how many others are similarly corrupt? You’d think any newspaper worth its name would love to get its teeth in such a story, but since the same people who run the papers run the politicians, they’d rather not bother…

Don’t You Know There’s An Election On?

Sleaze, UK elections, UK politics
Published on

The story above is now a thing of the past, says Gordon Brown, who’s been touting his newly rediscovered (for the 5th, or was it 6th? time) Presbyterian conscience all over the media, all the while grinning as rigidly as only someone who just had his medication can.

But crowded out by the blanket coverage of MPs’ licensed larceny and untroubled by very much scrutiny at all Labour’s petty election tricks roll on as usual:

A couple identified as “Gillian and Barry from Port Seton” were quoted in leaflets used in the Lothians as saying: “It’s Gordon Brown’s leadership that will get us through these tough times. Labour is the only party on the side of hard-working families, standing up for Scottish people nationally and in Europe.”

The couple and their young daughter Hanna also appear on the front of Scottish Labour’s manifesto for Thursday’s poll.However, leaflets distributed in the Highlands and Islands attribute precisely the same quote to “The Conniff Family, from Wester Ross”.

The quote also appears next to a family on Labour leaflets in Greater Manchester, with the phrase “British people” substituted for “Scottish people”.

Another variation turns up in Central Scotland, where “the McDonald family from Sauchie” feel they can “rely on Gordon Brown’s leadership to see the country through these tough times”.

One of the Conniff family, Christine, was a Labour party list candidate in the Highlands and Islands at the 2007 elections.

Dundee West MSP Joe Fitzpatrick, the SNP’s European election campaign coordinator, said Labour had been caught red-handed.

They do seem to making a habit of that.

Lest the voters should temporarily forget such blatant dishonesty and actually make a decision on the issues, Labour’s spin merchants have drafted ‘personal’ apologies for Labour’s MPs, MEPs and local councillors to send to voters ahead of this Thursday’s Euro and local council elections :

The letter for Labour’s local councillors

Dear [Insert Name]

I know how angry people are with Westminster politicians. I suspect you are as fed up I am, as day after day more stories come out showing greed and in some cases, serious wrongdoing. I would like to echo Gordon Brown’s words – that I am sorry that the political system and some MPs have let you down.

I’m sure Insert Name will find that very reassuring and resolve to vote Labour right away, or they would if they could find its name on the ballot paper.

But Insert Name may be a Wirral voter, where the spirit of Damien McBride is alive and kicking. Local Labour activists are accused of using BNP tactics against a defecting councillor:

WIRRAL’S Labour group last night refused to comment on an email calling for help to hand out leaflets in the ward of a defector from their party – despite one of their own volunteers comparing it to “a BNP mailing”.

The email, leaked to the Daily Post, contains a furious rant against former Labour councillor Denis Knowles who two weeks ago quit the party and crossed the council chamber to the Tories.

The leaflet also featured a mock-up picture of Cllr Knowles with two faces – one saying he is a Labour supporter and the other saying he is Conservative.

[…]

… the email calling for party members to deliver the leaflet was criticised by one of its recipients. The email describes local Conservatives Ian Lewis, Leah Fraser and Chris Blakeley, along with Tory leader Jeff Green as “very scary people” and highlights their names with skull and crossbones motif. It is signed “ANON” and underneath says: “Leader’s Office, Wirral Council” and gives local Labour HQ contact details…. It is understood that the email was not intended to go outside the Labour group.

They really don’t have much luck with those internal emails, do they.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being partisan, so will I’ll also point out that Labour aren’t the only party resorting to negative spin and dirty tricks. The Lib Dems in Cornwall are also accused:

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS have been forced to make a formal apology after using a highly offensive obscene term to describe an opposition councillor in a campaigning leaflet.

Mebyon Kernow councillor Stuart Cullimore said he was “absolutely appalled” at being the subject of foul-mouthed abuse in an official Lib-Dem leaflet ahead of Thursday’s county council and Euro elections.

The leaflet, calling Coun Cullimore a “greasy-haired t***”, was distributed to houses in the Camborne South division on behalf of Lib-Dem Cornwall Council candidate Anna Pascoe, who said “foul play” is suspected.

It’s my considered opinion that judged entirely by his photo and the fact he’s a candidate for the formerly Vlaams Blok-sympathising, Cornish separatist party Mebyon Kernow, that the candidate is indeed a greasy haired twat. Anyone can have an opinion, but it’s hardly the thing to put in an election leaflet.

With only 3 days to go till the election there may well be many more dirty tricks happening nationwide, but if there are, they’re not being reported very well. Not enough space o the front or inside pages and for that we can again blame dishonest MPs.