Tuesday 26 February 2008

Quote of the day

” Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money - only for wanting to keep your own money.”

Joseph Sobran


PM’s Kiss of death for Martin

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 ;-)