Pls see the photo of the Ginger Chipmunk, Hazel Blears.
You’ll see that we have (cunningly) disguised Ms Blears to closely resemble the “Comedy Giant” Jimmy Krankie.
Now the differences are endless, we accept that.
What we would like you to consider is why Jimmy would make a better MP than Blears & why, in return, Blears would make an excellent panto performer.
Oh, the usual bottle of Chimay is on offer…..

So she quits with perfect timing. Wears a brooch which proudly proclaims her boat rocking capabilities and then rides off into the sunset of the Brown government.

Waiting to return in a future resurgent PLP no doubt.

Er, until her local party officials tell her that they are rather pissed off with her antics and she is facing a motion of no confidence.

So like any slimy politician she retracts her ‘thoughtless and cruel’ words.

What a truly awful person.

http://tinyurl.com/nk4d3j

Her colleague Caroline Flint shares her position in the cess pit of politics and two-faced people. She can turn from supporting the Prime Minister to resigning her post in not much more than 24hrs. All because her weasel words didn’t get her what she wanted. Would you trust this woman? Would you want her representing you in Parliament? No, I thought not.

http://tinyurl.com/r8xano

Following a meeting of the PLP, it seems as though Gordon Brown has reasserted his leadership of the Labour Party. Yet at a meeting of Progress, Stephen Byers has stated that Gordon Brown cannot lead Labour to victory at the next general election. He has handed a propaganda coup to the Conservatives who will be able to quote his speech continuously between now and the general election.

In the past, those on the left of the Labour Party have been expelled for disloyalty for criticising the leadership. It is time that the Labour Party deals with the Blairites who continue to sow division and dissent in the Party.
The likes of Byers, Purnell, Flint and Blears should either put themselves forward for election or shut up.

The scurrilous and thew treacherous are dropping from the government like mammon’s flies

So is Gordon Brown going to survive this next week or not?

Up to the last few days i would have said yes – i couldn’t envisage a situation (no matter how bad the election results) where he’d go. I thought he’d stumble on battered and bruised until and election next year. I thought the expenses scandal had forced many challengers back into the trenches.

However, now i’m not so sure. For a few weeks now the Guardian has been steadily increasing its move against Brown, led by Polly Toynbee who like me had high hopes for Brown, has been left disilusioned and left with a feeling that he must be ousted to save the party from disaster next year. Andrew Rawnsley followed Polly this weekend by talking up voting for the Lib Dems and this morning the Guardian editorial was a damning indictment against Brown. For this to be followed this morning by the resignation of Hazel Blears i really can’t see that Brown has enough authority to stagger on.

It will be an interesting few days coming up, but my prediction is that on Friday it will be declared that Labour is now out of control in all local authorities in England. This will be followed by disastorous european results on the weekend, in which many MPs with majorities of 7-8 thousand will receive a real shock. On Monday tea room chatter will increase and there will be open backlash at Monday evenings meeting of the PLP, before PMQ’s next week a letter will have been signed by up to 80 MPs including at least 10 former ministers. At this stage Brown will have to take the honourable decision.

On a more positive note Frank Field was spotted chatting to a number of the Tory hierarchy today including Steve Hilton – will he finally defect?

Brown out and Field out in one week? Thoughts?

Losing one cabinet minister might be a little careless, losing two in two days looks more like a conspiracy, actually it has more to do with the expected cabinet reshuffle. Its “every man for themselves” at the moment so jumping before you’re pushed is the order of the day.

Jacqui Smith had to go,  her dubious expenses claims meant Brown could not keep her in the cabinet after a reshuffle without provoking considerable public anger. Actually losing her cabinet post may help her to save her seat at the next General Election as her constituents may decide she has been punished enough.

Hazel Blears problems really started with her ill-advised “U-tube if you want to” article, she has developed a reputation for being blunt but is she really so naive as to believe that Gordon Brown would not see this as a personal attack?  Brown certainly has a vindictive streak, his description of her expenses “mistakes” as unacceptable whilst supporting others who had made similar “mistakes” proved that. I suspect that with a reshuffle imminent she asked Brown bluntly whether he would guarentee her a job and he wouldn’t. She chose to announce her departure before the local government elections on thursday because had she waited then it would have looked as though she was sacked due to the (expected) disasterous results. She certainly hopes to make a comeback at some stage and jumping now rather than being pushed may help that cause. The fact that her departure damages Brown is of no concearn to her though she might see it as an added bonus,  her primary aim is survival rather than revenge.  Her claim that she wants to return to “grassroots” has a basis in  truth, she will have to work hard in her constituency just to ensure that she remains an MP.

According to  the Telegraph’s Andy Porter (a close friend of Damian McBride) “Hazel Blears’ resignation as Communities Secretary was partly triggered by the discovery that she had allegedly avoided paying capital gains tax on the sale of another property.” This is Downing Street back up to its old tricks, getting dirt on enemies, putting the dirt into the public domain via friendly Lobby hacks.  Guido has been told by a source that the same “Cabinet Office compliance unit” that found out about Blears’ other property has more expenses dirt on Alastair Darling.  That is being used to menace Darling, just in case he gets any Geoffrey Howe type ideas.

Nick Brown is the “shit-kicker in chief” according to a well connected Blairite, Watson is still unofficially doing his old enforcer job, even the semi-detached Douglas Alexander is back on the bunker team.  Blairites emphasise to Guido that they are going to keep silent until the close of the polls tomorrow at 10pm.  That leaves the Brownies a free run to have the mother of all factional fights to save their fuhrer.

Well that post this morning was prophetic faster than Guido expected. More and more interesting. 

This is looking more like a deliberate effort to unseat Gordon…

A lesson Guido learnt the hard way in his younger days was “never antagonise a redhead”.   Could Gordon be about to learn the same lesson?

It has been bothering Guido that he couldn’t see the logic for anyone leaking Jacqui’s exit plans. Certainly doesn’t make sense for Brown central to leak it (contrary to LabourList’s claim).  Guido was putting the leak in the cock-up rather than the conspiracy category.  However the Blears theory makes some sense – Blears feels aggrieved that she got roughed up by Brown over expenses in a way that Darling (until yesterday) Hoon and Purnell did not.   She also feels imperilled by the reshuffle and of course she isn’t really a fan of Gordon.  By destabilising Gordon and revealing ahead of the re-shuffle that a woman is already leaving cabinet she shores up her own position.  She also scores some brownie points for the future by laying some useful ground-work for Alan Johnson…

The Telegraph reports:

Alistair Darling, along with others including Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon and Jacqui Smith, have all claimed for the costs of accountancy advice using expenses intended to fund their parliamentary and constituency offices.

A tax expert described the claims as “scandalous”, especially as the expenses are tax-free.

Under HM Revenue and Customs rules, most people are not allowed to claim the cost of employing an accountant to fill in a self-assessment tax form as a legitimate business expense.

Over the past 17 days, the Telegraph has exposed the questionable claims made by MPs using their second home allowances. Now we disclose details of the office expenses claimed by members of the Cabinet.

MPs’ use of the separate allowance scheme for office costs enables them to claim tens of thousands of pounds from public funds every year.

Several of the Cabinet ministers who claimed for accountants have already faced allegations that they sought to manipulate the expenses system for personal gain.
Miss Blears, the Communities Secretary, recently agreed voluntarily to pay a £13,000 capital gains tax bill on the sale of her “second home” after the Telegraph disclosed that she had “flipped” her designated second home twice in a year.

In total, the taxpayer has spent more than £11,000 on accountants for Cabinet ministers. A bill submitted by Mr Darling in February, 2008, included the cost of receiving tax advice for “the treatment of rental expenses against income”. During 2007, Mr Darling rented out his London flat after becoming Chancellor and moving into a grace-and-favour apartment.

In total, the Chancellor claimed more than £1,400 for accountancy bills in two years.

Other ministers who claimed for personal tax advice bills included David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, and Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary. The Prime Minister has not claimed for the cost of accountancy advice.

Isn’t it time that these crooked ministers resign, and not only backbenchers, but of course as well the likes of Mickey Gove and Fanny Maude?

They should resign their seats now and allow us to have some decent MPs.

Ben Wright on the BBC has just pointed out that MPs are a “pariah class”, which is what bankers were late last year and earlier this year. But at least bankers generally create wealth – many of our MPs are only interested in their own wealth.

Now we have MacKay and Morley, who have years of public service, the former having resigned and the second having been sacked (Labour, at last, acting more decisively than they have done - note that Dave has not yet sacked a single MP, despite talking the talk). The Tory grassroots, who are the folks who knock on the doors (after all), have made clear their views, which are in tune with those of the public:

Source: ConservativeHome

Cameron didn’t sack his Notting Hill buddy Gove, nor any of the rest of them. He should have, but he was too focused on bullying and threatening Lord Tebbit – who, with his wife, were injured in the Brighton bomb – with expulsion.

It’s time for wrongdoing MPs to be kicked out of their parliamentary parties for good (and at least sacked from any ministerial or shadow-ministerial posts) and maybe they should then quit politics for good and force some by-elections. Paying back isn’t enough – it’s time for many of these MPs to leave the House of Commons, and at least its reputation can be restored.

Today's theme...

The word ‘bung’ (meaning everything from a back-hander to dodgy expense claims, and I use dodgy in its broadest possible sense) is one of the best words to have entered the mainstream of the language in the last quarter of a century. The OED gives four meanings: a stopper (first sighted,1140); a purse or pick-pocket (1597 in the latter case, in Henry IV pt. II, Shakespeare invented the sequel, really, didn’t he?); a lie (1882); and a bribe, finally, in 1958. Since bribes are meant to put a cork in the mouth of the recipient, it looks pretty plausible that the modern ‘bung’ is descended from the original one. But, despite its sighting in 1958, it only really caught on in the 1990s, when ‘El Tel’ Terry Venables, sometime manager of our national football team, found himself alleged to have revealed that some football managers liked to get paid in cash when transfer deals occurred. It was Alan Sugar who originally alleged that Venables had told him this, and Venables denied  even using the word. But Sugar alleged that Venables had alleged that Brian Clough used to drive to motorway service stations for this purpose, and that ‘he liked his bung’. Clough duly also denied it. But from that moment on, the word has been used everywhere.

And of course, it’s being used now – Jon Snow himself produced it the other night – of the ’second home allowance and other fiddles’  furore which is engulfing the government (or ‘parliament’, if you ask a member of the government). And sad to say, even Hazel Blears and Alistair Darling have been caught up in the allegations of troughing: and this only days after my saying that I admired Blears – not a popular opinion with my friends, by the way.

Doubtless every party in parliament has members indulging in the same process of claiming perks. It is, of course, all perfectly legal. It’s in its way no different from people claiming what they are allowed to against tax. But it looks what it is: shoddy. And now the edifice of the Labour government is really starting to totter. Lumley and the Gurkhas; second home allowances. There will be another catastrophe along in a minute. Once someone has used the word ‘bung’ in the context of you, you are pretty much doomed.

Perhaps the only crumb of comfort in the slow slide back to a Conservative government, and everything that goes with it, is that Cameron is not yet raging ahead in opinion polls in the way he should be. Traditionally it is a by-election which sends a government over the edge, or a sequence of them. It would be good if one came along in somewhere the Lib Dems could win, and put the cat among the pigeon-droppings. But that creaking sound you hear may be the noise of my clutching at straws.

Following an investigation by the Daily Telegraph newspaper into the expense claims of Britain’s MPs, we can now reveal shocking new claims made at the expense at the taxpayer:

Records show that Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has been claiming for the import of yak meat from Tibet. It is believed that Blears got a taste for the flesh of hairy bovines whilst on holiday in Tibet in 2005. Since then, she has regularly received shipments of cuts taken from domesticated yaks at her constituency home in Salford. She is estimated to have claimed over £30,000 of meat in the past three years.

Geoff Hoon, meanwhile, is reported to have claimed £7,000 for tasteless artwork by the London-based artist Grant Nature. Nature, most famous for his 1994 sculpture ‘Dirty Peter’ which depicts Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe eating a dog poo sandwich, is thought to have been contracted to produce several small paintings for Hoon to be displayed in his London flat. The subject of these paintings ranges from date rape to bestiality and self harm.

Gordon Brown is also not blameless in this scandal, having retrieved £1.5m from public coffers in order to pay for a live reenactment of his favourite film, Conan the Destroyer, for the benefit of himself and a few other senior cabinet ministers. The production, converted into a three-act play by Brown himself, was performed in No. 10’s spacious basement and featured Jason Donovan as the titular Conan. Donovan has been quoted as saying: ‘He [Brown] just approached me with his script in a pub when I performing in the West End… I had no idea he would be using public money to fund the production.”

Blears, Yak Meat Lover, Yesterday

Brown, Blears and Straw are among cabinet members who will be revealed by the Telegraph tomorrow as having scammed their expenses.

For example, Brown had a dodgy arrangement involving paying his brother £6k for a ’shared’ cleaner. He also claimed for a £150 plumbing receipt twice.

Hazel Blears moved house thrice in 3 months and made many related claims, while Straw overclaimed for a council tax bill.  See the Telegraph and also below:

“Gordon Brown used his Parliamentary allowances to boost his expenses claims by switching his designated second home shortly before he moved into Downing Street upon becoming Prime Minister.”

MPs’ expenses: Gordon Brown’s response

History of controversy around Brown’s flat

“Geoff Hoon’s property empire built on taxpayers’ money

“Europe minister has established a property empire worth £1.7 million after claiming expenses for at least two properties.”
 

MPs’ expenses: Geoff Hoon’s response

“The taxpayer contributed almost £10,000 to the costs of Alistair Darling buying a new London flat after the Chancellor changed the official designation of his second home.

MPs’ expenses: Alistair Darling’s response”

It appears that Jacqui Smith was the tip of the iceberg: almost half ofthe Cabinet were all at it.

Hazel Blears’ Observer piece this morning makes some strong arguments about the need for the labour party to actually engage with voters. A lot of what she says is eerily similar to John Major’s (undeniable effective) soapbox strategy in the 1992 general election.

I think she picks up on the tendency for organisations (I include private companies in this as well) to see social networking as ‘the solution’. She is clearly not impressed by Gordon Brown’s video message, coining the fantastic phrase “YouTube if you want to”.

YouTube is not ‘the answer’. Social media is the means not the end.

But she misses the point – Blears calls for politicians to spend more time actually engaging with people, hearing their anger. Used correctly, social media offers a fantastic way to do this. Gordon Brown’s problem is not that he’s using social media, it’s that he’s trying to use it in ‘old media’ ways.

That YouTube video is simply a broadcast, something politicians have been doing ever since they invented the radio. Comments have been turn off – it’s about as disengaged as you can possibly get.

A lot of politicians are getting it – where Twitter, Facebook and blogging work well it’s where the publisher engages with other users. People like Tom Harris get this. He interacts with his commentators and gets into the debate on twitter. He isn’t looking at the web as another tool to broadcast but as yet another way to meet with, listen to and engage with voters.

I think the biggest sign that he gets it is that he knows it’s just one of the many methods he needs to be using. He held a town hall meeting in his constituency to listen to his electorate in person.

Everyone looks at Obama’s election victory and get excited about social media – but it wasn’t the web wot won it for Obama – it was engaging with the electorate. Online was the right tool for certain circumstances, but it isn’t a panacea that will solve everything and miraculously win elections.

So Hazel Blears – you’re right, politicians do need to get on their soapbox and engage with the public. But don’t rule out doing that online.

… of preventing the Conservatives winning the next election? Every time the Labour government half-convinces the electorate that the problem is with the ‘global economy’, it finds a way of putting its foot in its mouth, its finger in its eye, and its elbow in its ear-hole (it does have the appearance of a contortionist at present). But there is something hopelessly charmless about the opposition, which consists of self-conscious codgers like Ken Clarke, and grinners like George Osborne.

It wasn’t the global economy, of course, it was (assumes Thatcherite tone) living beyond our means. I used to whistle with incredulity at the sums of cash that credit card companies were perpetually offering me, and I was determined not to fall for it. (I did, as a matter of fact, get up to about seven of them at one point, so that I could get the free gifts they were using as inducements, before cutting them all up. In one case, I took advantage of a £4000, three-month loan, since that was exactly the sum I needed for those three months when changing homes, but it was back in their piggy-bank before they could charge me.)

Still, it is depressing to hear that it will be a decade or more before we are back where we started (even I will have ‘retired’ by then, if, as my mother would have added, I am spared). And I suspect that this depression, in every sense, is what it is driving people towards the Tories. Stop! Come back! But what else is on offer?

The trouble with politicians is that they are so hard to judge. And besides, the ones I like – with the exception of the Liberals’ Vincent Cable, who is universally applauded, admired, and would win a Presidential contest if we had one – appeal to me on partly irrational grounds, and are not what you might call popular with other people (many are cordially loathed). The ones I like are Margaret Beckett and Hazel Blears and Sarah Teather and Yvette Cooper. Beckett just strikes me as ruthlessly competent (I can’t think of any chaos she has ever caused, and she is practically prehistoric, in that she had a junior post in the Wilson government, let alone the Callaghan one). Hazel Blears is increasingly less prone to jargon, and also has a combative streak, which is something I also like about the Liberals’ Sarah Teather. Yvette Cooper… I don’t know… perhaps she just looks as if she is doing her level best. Perhaps it’s just that she’s polite.

There, that’s it. Five politicians I trust! Not a Conservative among them. They are cannily keeping quiet about what they would do, and Buggins’ turn (or is it Buggin’s turn?) will probably see them home and very, very dry. They won’t dare to change the 50% tax rate on those who earn more than £150,000. But why only 50%? Why is anyone earning that much? A trick was missed. Labour has got to stop looking as if it doesn’t want to upset Daily Mail readers, who have already decided against Labour, anyway.

People keep saying it’s like the 1970s. False analogy. It is much worse behind the scenes, but much calmer on the streets. The lights are still on every day. Rationing has not been introduced, although perhaps it should be.

I will vote Liberal again. I have no choice, where I live (I am a committed believer in proportional representation). About the one hope we have is that there will be a Liberal surge, caused by the outpouring of love for Vincent Cable, whose canonisation must be imminent. He gets my soul, I mean, vote.

St. Vincent Cable