The MPs : Round 1, Peter Bottomley
Our grey hair count has tripled since we began doing the rounds of MPs. Trying to get support for the Misrepresentation of the People Act has been a learning curve to say the least.
One of our first appointments was with Peter Bottomley. Given yesterday's brief dip into the murky waters of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and Elizabeth Filkin's time in that position (see Martin Bell's interview yesterday), we felt it worth giving Peter's comments on this subject an air (before we get to the meat of the matter). He sat alongside Martin on the Committee for Standards and Privileges, was at the epicentre of the Filkin controversy and not shy about the issues.
Sadly, the edit room door is locked tight. The bastards drip-feed us the news slower than Chinese water torture.
From what little we've heard (ears pressed hard against the cutting room door) we like the cut of his jib...
"There's a system which I shall call explicitly organised lying by 10 Downing Street. And they will openly say things which are untrue"
"This is the first Prime Minister that I've ever heard of who will apparently say things which are untrue to get away from 24 hours of embarassment."
From a respected, sitting MP - Statements like this make us giddy with anticipation.
To strike gold on our first outing and find a credible MP willing to propose the Act would be too easy, and in any case, if he'd've said YES, we'd know from the smiles in the edit suite.
We've been promised the edit for the "Filkin" stuff tomorrow. The Misrepresentation of the People Act the day after. If either come along earlier - we'll be posting.
Today we have an interview with Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, she sits in the House of Lords, heads up the Power Inquiry (an independent think tank on democracy) and is certainly on par with our resident motherlode of constitutional law - Professor Conor Gearty. Her thoughts on the lack of legal redress we have against our elected representatives when they lie will be seminal - but sadly just "thoughts", whereas....
...Tomorrow we're seeing the man who can put such thoughts into practice - the real deal - Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. Here's hoping he hasn't seen any previous posts of ours - especially the recently discovered footage of him fooling around when he shared a flat (and a girlfriend - Ed) with Tony Blair.
Irreverent ? Disrespectful ? Moi ?
Aaaah - but he would call Blair a liar. He's a Tory isn't he. Question is, if there were such a thing as the Misrepresentation of the People Act, would he have the balls to take the PM to court ?
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was wondering. However, it's hard to see how they will be able to maintain that they can stay above the law whilst also being the big cogs in the democracy mechanism
ReplyDeleteThey can do whatever they want when it comes to staying above the law - check out the exclusions to the 2006 Equality Bill - S52 at http://mo-truth.blogspot.com/2007/02/geese-and-gander.html
ReplyDeleteIf Bottomly openly says the Prime Minister's a liar, why aren't he and his party doing something about it ? Maybe it's 'cos one day he thinks his team'll be in the driving seat ?
ReplyDeleteHard to do something about it when Ministers won't answer Parliamentary and written questions.
ReplyDeleteHard to take a question seriously from a man named Bottomley, married to a woman named Virginia.
ReplyDelete