It’s been looking as though the red faced one, Michael Martin, Speaker of the house of Commons, bearer of the huge chip on his shoulder, would be able to ride out the scandal over his expenses - Especially as he is in charge of investigating them himself…
“Oi me! Did you do it?”, “Wot me guv? Naah.”, “Well that’s OK then, I’m convinced”.
Martin is the chairman of the Commons members estimate committee, who are conducting a ‘root-and-branch’ review of expenses following the discovery of Derek Conway’s dodgy expenses.
And we wondered why he had been so keen on blocking details of MPs' travel expenses being published under the Freedom of Information Act…
His spokesman, Mike Granatt, has now resigned for ‘ethical reasons’ apparently after cottoning on to the fact he had been parroting what has delicately been described as ‘incorrect information’ concerning actual details of Martin’s wife’s taxi fares.
No stranger to being accused of playing fast and loose with taxpayers money - in October 2007, Martin was criticised for blowing over £20K of taxpayers' money on lawyers to silence negative press coverage. Being a ‘class warrior’ didn’t put him off employing posh libel firm Carter-Ruck .
Martin must surely realise that if people criticise his conduct it could simply be because they genuinely find his conduct is open to question, still class is always a good smokescreen, bound to guarantee a knee jerk reaction with the more bigoted left.
But he may be doomed after all, as Gordon Brown has given him his backing. Talk about the kiss of death ;-)
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5 comments:
‘root-and-branch’
This is an expression which runs through my mind in a different context for these bozos.
I think I can follow your line of thought on this.
I love the way Labour bacbench and govt mps have lined up to support the impartial speaker. Almost as if...he were...one of them. No. Couldn't be.
The class thing is a real red herring. George Thomas (Lord Tonypandy, was the son of a miner who died while he was a young boy and he was brought up by his mother. There weren't any gibes about his upbringing, except for being Welsh maybe ;-) and he was regarded as a good speaker by all parties.
Not one person serious who has stood up to defend martin has claimed he is a good Speaker.
Here's a scary thought, if he doesn't go soon he could be presiding over a hung parliament!
TD, I can’t believe that – Not!
GS, Hmmnn… Hung parliament... That could work for me. How many lamp posts are there in the vicinity of Westminster anyway? ;-)
Re Martin, I agree it is a red herring, but he is using it. For my money he is a nasty piece of work anyway. I have often suspected that if his attitude towards, so called ‘class’, were instead directed towards race he would probably have been prosecuted by now.
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