Cash for amendments threatens to sink Parliament's reputation further

BNP4ME

I wonder if they will call in the police.

Slim Jim

We really are becoming more disenfranchised in this country. Witness the refusal to honour a solid manifesto pledge to have a referendum on the Con-treaty. Is it time for direct action? Well, marching on parliament won't work - they ignored the anti-war and anti-hunt ban protesters, didn't they? Maybe a tax strike would focus their minds. Perhaps a start would be to cancel all our direct debits for TV licensing and council tax for starters. Or maybe a petition on the No. 10 website...seriously though, this is a wonderful opportunity for a solid commitment for the opposition parties to propose the necessary changes, but is their heart in it?

bta

Wasn't it P.J.O'Rourke who noted that "When buying and selling are subject to legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators"?

mitch

Their reputation couldn't sink further this is blairs real legacy a government machine that is corrupt from top to bottom.
When I read the story I wasn't outraged or even surprised just saddened that our country is as bent as any Latin American dictatorship. if I could afford to leave I would.

Obnoxio The Clown

Interesting how it's all "crony" Labour Lords in this trough, eh?

Allegedly.

RobertD

Not a matter for a polite enquiry by a committee of senior peers as proposed. If the evidence stacks up it is criminal corruption and the investigation should be in the hands of the police. After all they did have had lotsd of recent practice with Damien Green and cash for honours.

Andrew

Brace yourselves for the usual diversionaries - "..what about Lord Ashcroft/Laidlaw/etc..."

Possibly followed by, "..corruption, as everyone knows, is a global problem that started in America, so we'll be taking the necessary decisions for the long term..."

Or maybe, deliciously, on this matter Labour might be a "do-nothing party"?

p.doff

Little chance of a serious or rapid enquiry.Baroness Royall suggested that if guilty the peers could be "named & shamed".When did one of our politicians last feel shame?

TGF UKIP

It's not just the Labour peers in the frame here. At least two of them, Tuscott and Taylor bragged of other companies they had helped in the same way.

If a company bribes an employee of another company to get the terms of a contract varied then both parties, bribe donor and recipient, are guilty of a criminal offence.

Be interesting to watch how the NuLab Metropolitan Stasi manage to distance themselves from this one.

adrian drummond

You wouldn't have got this with the hereditary Lords.

Rex Burr

On the ‘Daily Politics’ during the week a labour MP was being quizzed by Andrew Neil about the party line on disclosure of expense claims. The MP challenged Andrew, “You are paid out of public (BBC) funds, would you be prepared to have your expense claims made public. Andrew cut the MP short, “Yes I would, I am prepared to publish all my expense claims”.
(Not verbatim)
MPs believe that they are a class apart.
What have they got to hide?

Verity

"Baroness" (I'm assuming she's one of those lifer fake aristocrats) sounds as though she should be on life support. Anyone that comatose should not be functioning (if that is not too strong a word) in public life.

Giving criminals a good "naming and shaming"! Oh, the cruelty! What about their yooman rights?

If you hooked her up to an EEG, would it flatline? Does she understand the one-syllable word "crime"?

A real Conservative leader would go for the throat over this. Dave won't.

PS - I haven't read anything from Dave over those 80 Albanian convicted murderers allowed into Britain for "asylum".

Verity

Slim Jim asks "but is their heart in it?" Well, if you're referring to Dave's heart, no. Dave's heart is in becoming PM under the Buggins' turn mandate.

Verity

Adrian Drummond - Agreed. That is why I am always proposing that the Lifers be chucked out of the Lords and it become solely the domain of the Hereditaries. Their interest is, and always was, in conserving. In that sense, they are true conservatives.

Most of them weren't even that interested in politics. They rolled up out of a sense of duty, but they weren't obsessive debaters and voters. They turned up if they had special expertise in a subject being debated; otherwise they basically stayed away and got on with their own interests. They weren't seeking preferment, because they already had it. Most of them were fairly, or very, rich and weren't pecking around for extra emoluments. That is why it was the most effective second chamber in the world.

And that is why Tony Blair wanted to destroy it.

DSR

Verity - At the risk of becoming as tiresomely repetitive as thee, an opposition leader has no power to effect change at all - the election (when it comes) will be his first chance to make any difference at all. Until then, he has to do whatever it takes to get elected.

If, by becoming more strident, more passionate; if, by committing himself to policies at this stage; if, by nailing his colours to any mast whatsoever, he alienates the public who will have to vote for him, then he will be yet another in the long line of politicians who just won't be able to make the difference.

I think he realises that and you don't; so I think he's cleverer than you.

The Watcher

Already the blogosphere is full of lefties calling for the abolition of the Lords. Contrast this with Thatcher who used to be voted down in the Lords on a regular basis but never tried to neuter it or pack it with cronies! The Lords was and is still a necessary check on the executive. A chamber full of members who cannot be whipped into submission and threatened with deselection or being squeezed out by boundary changes. It's not perfect but it's still the best option!

David

Could we start calling it 'Cash for Laws'? Reflects the reality of it with a word more people understand. Amendments doesn't sound sexy enough.

Alex

The Labour peers may have broken the anti-bribery and corruption laws, in which case they should be investigated by the police.

Unfortunately, the police today are not much more trustworthy.

SEBHFUAR

Does this make labour the "Do nothing for nothing" party?

Northern John

Looks like Lord Levy undersold those peerages. £120,000 per year is quite a return on investment.

Austin Barry

As ever the old saw about politicians and bananas applies: they start green, turn yellow and end up bent. Bastards.

JohnAnt

Snape? Is that Lord Severus Snape? No wonder then: they're probably all buddies of Lord Voldemort masquerading as Muggles.

JohnAhnt

'Named and shamed.' Hm.
Well, they have been named. But as Hurree Jamset Ram Singh the Nabob of Bhanipur might have said, the shamefulness is not at all terrific.

Verity

DSR - I don't accept anything you say. Of Opposition leaders, you write that until the election, they have to say whatever it takes to get elected. Regardless of the fact that Dave's soundbites will erode his natural constituency. And Labour welfare slags and trades unionists are never going to vote for him in a million years even if he walked back from his holidays in France.

Problem: Dave doesn't know what to say because he hasn't the foggiest how most people feel. It's that public relations man intuition, I guess. Referring to his own party, he says he has to "decontaminate the brand". No wonder he kept Teresa May on. They're two of a kind.

All he knows is what first got Tony Blair elected, 12 years ago and he admires it, which is why he declared himself the heir to Blair.

Your second paragraph is so muddled, I sincerely do not understand it. You're saying he should not express any passionate conservative beliefs and his deterimination to execute for fear of offending ... Conservative voters? This seems to involve the chimera that there are millions of Labourites panting to vote for Dave if only he would agree to talk Estuary and be more sympathetic to thuggish hoodies.

Even Cameron wouldn't agree with you about not expressing any beliefs. He expresses plenty, but on the wrong side of the fence. There's no such thing as "global warming", for example, other than the global warming and global cooling that has been part of the Earth's cycle for millions of years and which is occasioned by the activity on the surface of the Sun. (He doesn't even seem to have been told that Mars warms and cools in the same cycles as does the earth, with only a couple of motorised vehicles on the whole planet. And those two or three aren't even gasoline-powered... He doesn't seem to know that when the Romans were in Britain, people were swanking around in togas and sandals and there were vast vineyards in Yorkshire and further north. The Languedoc des leur jours. Surely he learned this at Eton?)

Cameron expresses views all right, but they are the wrong views to persuade Conservatives to vote for him. If he took your somewhat arcane advice and didn't espouse any opinions at all, he would probably garner more Conservative votes than he does with his LabourLite Lite socialist-targetted smarty-pants pr sound bites.

Verity

Well, Austin Barry, I would add to your analogy, having banana trees in my garden, you cannot get rid of them. Like Labour, they keep throwing out new shoots, like ever-increasing quangoes, think tanks, advisory bodies. The only way to get rid of a banana tree is to haul it up by its roots.

For the good of our ancient land and people, Labour has to be destroyed and Dave isn't the man to do it.

Archie

Another of the contemptible Blair's legacies! I refer of course to the destruction of the House of Lords as an effective second chamber. The heredetaries, for all their faults but because of their significant property holdings, at least had a vested interest in the well-being of the country at large, unlike the life "peers" who for the most part are time-servers and placemen. As I said when the old Lords was abolished, this will all end in tears, and need we look further for proof of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"?
I suppose it's too much to ask the so-called leader of the opposition to make political capital out of this fiasco?