ONE LAW FOR THE RICH

There is only one test here, irrespective of David Laws wealth, personal relationships or his character, be it good or bad. Did he or did he not illegally and knowingly claim and accept monies to which he was not entitled?

If the answer is yes, he should, like all the other thieving b*****s be brought to book in a criminal court, be stripped of office and barred from ever holding public office again.

But like the others, he will walk away with nothing more than having to pay back the alleged £40,000 he purloined. From his massive wealth it could be likened to me losing a pound.

Yet if you steal a packet of pork chops to feed your family your poverty or your hunger will not be an excuse. While you may be treated leniently by a judge or magistrate you will find yourself before one or the other and have a criminal record to be taken in to consideration should you find yourself before a court of law again.

And they try to tell us we live in a classless society? That we are all equal before the law? There is only one answer to this 'money talks' society thrust upon us by Thatcher and her 'ites' and that is a return to socialism.

To this end I hope to see Len McCluskey elected General Secretary of the Unite union. With millionaires abandoning New Labour they will have to rely on trades union funding once again and accept the agenda of the blue collar worker, not the wealthy entrepreneur or the City execs.

MONEY TALKS

There are two scandals in the news this week. The BAE Systems £208m out of court settlement and the three MP's and one lord, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield who are trying to use Parliamentary Privilege to avoid a criminal case.

In the first situation, the £208m 'fine' paid by BAE seems a massive penalty. But when one considers they count their income at over £1,000m and cash flow in the thousands of millions, it pales into a rather less significant consequence. And it has avoided an open court which may have uncovered further wrongdoing; I think they got off lightly.

As for the MP's and lord, to break the rules sufficiently for prosecutors to believe a crime may have been committed and then try to use Parliamentary Privilege to avoid open court questions, I'll make this point. If your extravagant expense claims are truly mistakes, you have nothing to fear from a criminal prosecution, for you will surely be found not guilty. Or does 'nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong' only apply to us lesser mortals, who often have only Legal Aid, which MP's seem intent on removing, to call to our defence.

These politicians should remember that Parliamentary Privilege was enshrined in law to prevent the monarch from interfering in the proceedings of Parliament, and prevented an MP from being impeached for proceedings or speeches made in Parliament. While I don't claim a full knowledge or understanding of the Privilege, it seems to me it was not designed to protect politicians from prosecution for criminal activity, inside or outside of Parliament.

Expenses plans 'not watered down'

Looks like the expenses reforms are more subtle than substance.

"The man in charge of overhauling MPs' expenses denies backing away from some proposed radical reforms to the system."

Isn't whitewash mostly watered down?

Harriet Harman – Don’t Sack Spouses

Harriet Harman has said that MP's who pay family members to work for them should not be forced to sack them.

Parents are not allowed to pay family members to help with childcare because such a system would be open to abuse. Why should MPs employ their families when they have shown they cannot be trusted to apply allowances legally, let alone fairly?

Sorry, Mrs. Harman. MPs have had it too good for too long, taken advantage of generous allowances and now comes the time to pay the piper. You'll find little public sympathy and your comment only serves to underline how out of touch you really are.

It proves to me my belief that the Labour Party has ceased to exist, along with morality and integrity in politics. Clawing at each and every straw to try to retain as much as you can when the honourable thing would be as a minimum accept the recommendations with what grace can be mustered in light of the abysmal and flagrant abuse of taxpayers funding.

The Failing of Democracy through the Expenses Scandal

The elections are over and we see New Labour thoroughly thrashed in the European and local elections. And once again we see the gullibility of the electorate and the big flaw in democracy,

Starting at the beginning, we saw the Telegraph exposing the expenses scandal. What few people noticed was the Goebbels style propaganda coup- where the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told. But that truth was represented in such a way that the reporters and the newspaper editor knew would manipulate public opinion.

In the first week of the exposé we heard about the New Labour politicians (I use the term loosely!) inventive claims. Now as you will probably know from previous posts I am no lover of New Labour, or for that matter any of the three 'front runners' of the political spectrum. But why the emphasis on New Labour? Anybody with a modicum of intelligence would immediately realise politicians from all parties would have their snouts in the trough. In fact, I suspect there is almost a club culture where experienced politicians educate their newly elected brethren in creative claiming. The second week we began to see politicians from other parties exposed. Yet still most of the anger was directed at the Labour Party.

Most people might reasonably suppose that this is because they are the Government and as such carry the onus of responsibility. Yet this or some similar situation has probably existed since our modern parliament was conceived.

Let me explain by example. Hopefully, it will show how the truth can be manipulated and the next time a scandal is exposed or a headline misleads, you might be able to better understand the machinations of the media and how they manipulate us using psychological techniques- propaganda. In the early 1970's Ted Heaths' Tory government was brought down by two miner's strikes, one of which included the mass picketing of the Saltley coking plant.

I know it well. I was born almost next door in Cranby Street. At the time I still lived in Birmingham. We had the Evening Mail delivered every evening and one of the front-page headlines read "Policeman Hurt on Picket Line". This had the immediate effect of inflaming emotions and angering the average man in the street- even those who while not wholeheartedly supporting the miners might have felt some sympathy for their plight. It turned borderline opinion against the miners. How dare they picket and attack our policemen?

My father, on reading the headline but before reading the article immediately began a diatribe condemning all miners and trade unionists and suggesting they should be shot. I suspect this was the reaction of most people not educated in the expertise of manipulative journalism.

Reading on, the piece described how a policeman, not even on the picket line had been walking towards the coking plant and as he crossed the road, slipped on the kerb and twisted his ankle. This made no difference to most people. The emotions had been aroused by the headline and opinion had been formulated that all pickets were violent and that they had attacked the clumsy policeman.

One might argue that without the pickets there would be no need for him to have been there and he wouldn't have been hurt. Fair enough, that is an opinion. But why didn't the Mail report it so? Because it would not have been inflammatory. No, the Mail knew what it was doing and knew that regardless of the following story opinion would be formed by the headline and some would believe what they wanted to believe and ignore what was contrary to that belief.

And the same is true of the Telegraphs series of revelations. People read that Labour politicians were on the take. It was fed to them for a week and irrespective of subsequent revelations, the mould was set and New Labour was the cause and propagator of every conceivable ill.

Then came the elections. And what do the electorate do? Either didn't vote or chose a protest vote for an independent or minority party, the main result of which let the Tories in all over the country.

This is one of the big flaws in democracy. People using their vote as a form of protest. A free, secret vote is a very precious thing, hard won by the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people. It should be used according to ones conscience and beliefs, not to stick it to a party that has offended – particularly when that party is not guilty in isolation, but part of a much wider conspiracy. And if you think that voting for an independent that is free of corruption is the answer, they are no purer in thought or deed than the politicians we have ousted. Granted, they are unlikely to stick their noses in the expenses trough, but how many politicians who have been caught with their fingers in the till do you think would risk continuing to deceive? And then there are those who remembered the New Labour corruption and voted Tory, forgetting they too were guilty as charged thanks to manipulative reporting.

So the protest vote has done little for British politics apart from confer power by default. It has done nothing for democracy besides expose one of its weaknesses.

It probably means that by the middle of 2010 we will have a Tory government who will win by a massive majority. They will believe, as in the 1980's that they have the mandate of the people and will convince enough of us that their economic strategies are essential for the good of the country and eventually we will all benefit. In fact the wealthy will get wealthier and the poor will get poorer and we will be repeatedly told by the White Queen 'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.'
(Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871))

MP's Expenses

I just watched Margaret Beckett on Newsnight. When asked about the £600 she had claimed for garden plants and a new pergola on her expenses, she refused to discuss the matter, only saying that the rules were followed. (It sounded a little like a child caught doing wrong and denying any wrong doing regardless of the circumstances or evidence.) While Foreign Secretary, she had access to a taxpayer-funded apartment in London, but like other ministers with similar privileges, she registered that as her primary residence. Sorry, Ms Beckett, but you were a member of the labour party and the government in the 1970’s. You and the party at that time purported to be socialist. There were many honourable socialists in that government. But for you to be at the trough with the rest of the rest of the pigs just because it didn’t break the rules betrays the foundation, the principles and the aims if the labour and socialist movement. If I were you, I’d hang my head in shame. I wait for the day that the labour party returns to its roots and once again becomes the party of the people, the disenfranchised and the ordinary working man and woman. I will be interested to see whether you resign from the labour party or if you change colours again and profess your socialist beliefs to keep your snout in the seemingly bottomless pit of benefits that the current administration denies ordinary people.

I have never voted for an individual. I vote according to the party they belong to and that party’s political, economic and social allegiance. These last 11 years have not given me that option, so I have voted according to my conscience, often meaning I have voted according to the beliefs of an individual. Often an independent. Often the lesser of several evils. If the labour party returned to its roots and I believed it to be genuine in its return, I would once again vote for them. However, if by some twist of fate Margaret Becket was our candidate, no matter what she professed to be her allegiance or belief, I certainly would use my vote elsewhere.

More Revelations HERE and HERE.