MPs are by and large a sleazy lot: from brown paper bags under the table ala Hamiltons to ‘innocent’ forgetfulness when employing relatives or double claiming these pricks are milking the system. They claim for the John Lewis list of tellies fridges curtains and the second homes that they claim they simply ‘must have’ to do their work.
The Speaker of the House, the almost incredibly inept and incompetent Michael Martin, recently lost a High Court action to allow his fellow sleazebags to conceal their dishonesty. Were it Geeklawyer or you that would, save an appeal, be the end of the matter.
We two, however, do not have the ability to make up self-serving law. It’s a perk of the job of being an MP perhaps. All the crooked sleazy & dishonest MPs & Ministers have got together to draft an amendment to the Freedom of Information Bill that will allow them to conceal their fiddling. Not because they are crooks, oh no, but because it would be expensive and time consuming. Oh yes and, erm, terrorism. You see FOI requests might help Al Qaeda locate MPs. Yea, honest and you wouldn’t want to help terrorists would you? You being in favour of democracy & all?
Many of us suckers, aka taxpayers, aren’t having it. Mysociety run TheyWorkForYou the famous website designed to keep MPs honest despite themselves. are running a campaign via Facebook group to get people to write into their MPs and demand that they oppose this legislation.
Geeklawyer has written to his scumbag Neo-Labour yes man and expects an unconstructive response. But ya gotta go through the motions.
It seems amusingly ironic that the same scum who are introducing ID Cards and the database state so that they can monitor everything we do, from taking a shit to drinking too much, want a little more privacy for themselves. Hypocrites.
Am I right in thinking that rather a lot of them are washed out / washed up barristers or was that the golden age? Actually thinking about it many of them seem to have a background in education.
Possibly I don’t know. Jack Straw Tony Blair and several other (ex)ministers aren’t washed up barristers; they were so dismal they never got the chance to become washed up. They were failures and went into politics where a ambition without competence isn’t a barrier to a career.
Sweet Baby Jesus, you’re right and some of them are even QC’s. I found 25 without trying.
Douglas Martin Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, QC
Michael Andrew Foster Jude Kerr, 13th Marquess of Lothian QC known as Michael Ancram
Michael Howard QC
Vera Baird, QC
Robert Graham Marshall-Andrews QC
Harriet Harman QC
Sir Malcolm Rifkind QC
Mostyn Neil Hamilton
John Whitaker (Call Me Jack) Straw
Geoffrey ‘Geoff’ William (TFH) Hoon
One doesn’t get to be a QC as a crap lawyer so I’d exempt them from my prejudice (as lawyers anyway).
Of course one of those is an honorary QC: Harriet Hymen who doesn’t get an exemption; she is reputed to be, by her civil servants colleagues a bit of a thicko.