The Professors passion for "The Science of Deceit" started here...

Employed by the Ministry (in a covert capacity) to help introduce the law ending dishonest politics, you can see his hand all over the posts of past.

Current political circumstances have forced him to reveal himself and as we speak, MPs are signing up to re-introduce The Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill for debate with over 80,000 voters supporting them.

Posts before Jan '08 are purely for the record (with hindsight they make fascinating reading). Posts after May 13th mark the Professor's return.


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Monday, January 15, 2007

Parliamentary Self Regulation a Blinding Success !!!

Quick update on that stalwart of our Parliamentary Democracy - the notion of self-regulation.

Every Parliamentarian we've interviewed to-date has argued MPs are accountable to the public between general elections via the various independent committees and commissioners that police them.

We've had problems with this concept all along, for two reasons (last week gave us a third).

1) The people give their sovereignty to MPs. MPs represent us. They're obligation to be honest is to us . If they deliberately misrepresent the facts, make misleading statements....tell lies. They're doing it in our name. We should have some direct legal means of redress to hold them swiftly to account.

2) How can we possibly have confidence in a self-regulatary process that allows the accused to be tried by their colleagues, their peers.

and now... "Cash For Dinners"

We're in the ridiculous situation where two members of the investigative body stand accused and have to be investigated by their own committee - Sir George Young MP is the Chairman for Chrisssakes !!. Those accused have had to stand down from the investigation. They're both Conservative, leaving a massively one-sided committee which is supposed to be cross party/apoltical to rule on the outcome.

Self-regulation is in a no-win situation.

If the committee finds them guilty, there'll be shouts of "foul play" - a politically biased judgement.

A "Not guilty" verdict and
see 2) above - we're back to "how convenient, a bunch of MPs find some other MPs innocent".

Incidentally - Cameron's one of the 19 Tory MPs accused. His (current) defence is that the rules weren't clear. So he consulted them ? Really ? Surely if they weren't clear, you'd ask for clarification ?

Rules aside, does he actually think the taxpayer should foot the bill for his party to hold fund-raising dinners ?

9 comments:

  1. So, David Cameron hosts dinners in Parliament to raise funds for his party saying in his defence that the rules on entertaining like this aren't clear.

    Did he feel it was OK for the taxpayer to pay for this, despite the rules ? Apparently so.

    As a snapshot of Cameron's regard for what's right v. the rules - it doesn't look good.

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  2. There's also the fact that the allegations can be made for party political reasons. Cameron et al were accused by some Labour MP's.

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  3. I think they might be up to 22 accused now, but can't find full list anywhere to check. Another good example of Tory sleaze - just as bad as the last lot.

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  4. It's a politically motivated complaint - so what ? It should be. Lab's under investigation in Cash for honours.

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  5. Labour's under investigation by the POLICE you arse. Anybody could have instigated that - it just happened to be an MP.

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  6. "JUST HAPPENED TO BE AN MP" - are you saying it wasn't politically motivated ?

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  7. Of course it was politically motivated - the point is, with "Cash for Honours", a member of the public could start the ball rolling because it was a criminal offence.

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  8. I'd like to see a stat on how many complaints received by these independent commissions were from the public and how many were from politicians.

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  9. is david cameron- jose mourinho
    and tony bliar - alex ferguson

    or maybe

    john reid as arsene wenger
    william hague as neil warnock

    maybe warnock would be blunkett??

    any suggestions??

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