Governments can recover from rage but not ridicule

David Ossitt

On the previous article headed Pornographic Expenses.

I posted a comment that was not shown, I think that this was because at the end I wrote a line that said.

Our Home Secretary is a *****.

That word has quite a number of meanings; one of these is the name we give to the long staff that a Bishop might carry.

Let us see if this will be posted.

Muhammad Haque

If events turn out to prove your analysis right then it would also expose the wide deficit of the UK House of Commons. The MPs will not have brought about the collapse of a discredited unaccountable regime. Why have these MPs at all! let alone pay them ! They are not holding the executive to account at all. They are not scrutinizing. They are not questioning. they are parading. Indulging. They are behaving in displays of zombified collective inertia incompatible with the basic demands of democracy..

Wilhelm

''The photos of Lord Myners in drag''

What is it with Englishmen having this fetish of dressing up as women ? Do they think its funny ? Well the rest of the world thinks its kinda perverted.

Watch Richard Branson dressed up as Wonderwoman on Youtube or see Jon Snow dressed in drag with bitchy queen David Starkey
on a More 4 channel advert. Its vomit inducing.

Boudicca

Everything Labour has coming in the next year it fully deserves - and more. I hope the Party is humiliated in June at the Euro Elections and annhialated at the next General Election.

The best thing Labour MPs could do is resign en masse and trigger a General Election. Even if they summon up the bottle to get rid of the Great Moron we won't put up with another placeman/woman as Prime Minister.

Resign en masse and at least some of the less despicable Labour characters would hold onto seats that they will undoubtedly lose next June if Gordon is allowed to hold on until then.

richardj

Little people, small minds and one unelected leader - what a shower!

John Wilkes

You could have done a whole post on the NYT article alone. Sometimes it takes outsiders to tell us some home truths. Forget Mr. Hannan MEP, this absolutely gets the Prime Minister on all fronts, the economic incompetence, the cowardice involved in failing to own up to his own faults and choosing who to blame dependent on your audience. It even (possibly unintentionally) exposes the paucity of his vocabulary - and so ideas and understanding - in talking about these issues - e.g.“we in Europe are uniquely placed to lead the world”. Everyone should read it - someone should read it out in welcome to the G20 leaders when they arrive.

Steve.W

Things can only get better?

Mitch

The end of nulab, laughter and disgust what a fitting end to a bunch of liars and cheats.

Not with a bang but a wanker(sorry)

AndyLeeds

As ye sow, so shall ye reap. They deserve no sympathy.

TrevorsDen

"Mr. Brown carries the added burden of having overseen Britain’s economy as chancellor of the exchequer for a decade before becoming prime minister in 2007. From that comes a belief, common in Britain, that he is one of those mainly responsible for the country’s current woes.
Partly because of the heavy burden of government debt built up during his stewardship, and the uncurbed recklessness of the country’s banks, Britain’s recession is already the harshest in Western Europe." ... Gosh don't you wish these Americans could come right out and say what they think?

Jacqui Smith pays her husband £40,000 a year to avoid scandals like this. I'd throw my Nokia at him if i were her.

Susan Hill

Oh joy. Bring it on. AND the clocks went forwards.

Hysteria

with all this stuff - why only 13%?

Moraymint

"Labour should prepare itself for a year that will be even more humiliating for it than the last year of the Major government ..."

On current form, neither the Labour Party generally nor Gordon Brown in particular will give a toss. The lot of them are operating in some weird alter-world to the rest of us. The really baffling thing is, how are we supposed to get rid of them?

This mixture of democracy, rank Government incompetence and political dishonesty is a heady mix. Government ministers, led by Brown himself, lack the honour to see the writing on the wall and put themselves and their policies to the vote. Democracy means that, until they are forced to allow us to vote, the dangerous and dastardly clowns running (ruining?) the country hang on in there until the UK is little more than a socio-economic basket case.

Isn't there some clever constitutionalist professor that can tell us how we are supposed get out of this mess without a few of us starting a revolution? It's about time the Divine Right of Gordon Brown to rule us mere mortals was terminated toute suite.

Pete, Scotland

Didn't realise that free porn movies was a perk of the job.

How do I become an MP?

Ken

Why do you think McBust won't withdraw from Afghanistan, he fears fury on the homefront.

oldtimer

It started with the lost computer discs just over a year ago. That was bad enough. But it seems to get worse with each passing week and month. You think you have seen and heard it all. But then come along other scandals, large and small. Todays, with Jacqui Smith and Lord Myners, are but the latest. How long, I ask myself, before we discover that rent boys, toyboys, gigolos, exotic mistresses and just plain tarts have been employed on the public, (should that be pubic?), payroll? To use an overworked phrase - you couldn`t make it up.

Verity

Mitch - Ha ha ha ha!

Thomas Cussans

Ridicule, whatever the Orton-like absurdity of Jaqui Smith's husband charging his porno habits to the taxpayer, is not the dominant mood.

The dominant mood is rage.

And it is this that will obliterate Brown and all his dismal fellow-travellers at the next election.

I am old enough to have seen a succession of more or less hopeless governments. But I have never seen any to compare with that presided over by Gordon Brown.

This is a government that isn't merely inept. It is - a proper measure of Brown's bizarre personal shortcomings – catastrophically hopeless, devious whenever it might be honest, clod-hopping whenever it attempts to be earnest, instinctively malign whenever challenged.

In every important way, it is incontestably the most dismayingly awful government Britain has ever had to confront. That it is presided over by a man elected by no one only adds to the abiding sense of horror.

This is way beyond a joke.

That said, that the Home Secretary's husband presummes that this venal administration should allow him to masturbate at the taxpayers' expense is a satire beyond even Swift.

What have we been reduced to?

JohnBUK

I see Millipede said that Ms Smith shouldn't resign as she's doing a great job. So its OK to steal from the taxpayer as long as you're doing a good job (in his opinion).

London Calling

The only thing that keeps me sane is the madness of this world...

Carry On Westminster...its hilarious....starring Alias Smith and Groans, Squirrel Nuttley and Eric I'm in a Pickle Get Me Out Of Here..

Now That's Entertainment... Thats Entertainment La La La La...:)

Verity

Geert Wilders must be 'avin' an ironic larff, though.

Verity

Thomas Cussans said: "Ridicule, whatever the Orton-like absurdity of Jaqui Smith's husband charging his porno habits to the taxpayer, is not the dominant mood.

"The dominant mood is rage."

Agreed. And what is more lethal than continued jeers?

Smith is a dead parrot! She is a parrot no more! This parrot has gone to meet its maker! This is an ex-parrot!

Gordo - you better make certain that this really is a dead socialist ex-parrot. As in, corpse. Gone to meet its maker. No longer claiming "second home" out of its cage in its sister's squat while its co-parrot lived in its real home charging pornographic parrot films to the few British taxpayers who are actually earning real money in the private sector.

richardj

Trevor's Den says Mrs Smith pays her husband £40,000 a year - she does not - the taxpayer does and he is therefore an employee of Mrs Smith paid for by the taxpayer. Why he should put any expenses whatsoever through Mrs Smith MP's expense account is the question - not whether the films were of one kind on another. The whole concept of an expense for this man is fraudulant and quite how the unelected one can not demand and receive her resignation is a mystery.

Gruntson

This Government is more Shorn of the Dead than the more scary Romero zombie epic cycle.

jethro

To what extent could Mr Smith's personal viewing habits constitute a potential security risk?

Ray

I like Richard Littlejohn's witty observation that - given the way she's probably fuming at her husband right now - "next time she claims that her sister's spare room is her 'main' home, she might just be telling the truth for once."

David Ossitt

oldtimer
March 29th, 2009 9:17pm

"It started with the lost computer discs just over a year ago".

Sorry to disagree; it started within days of the election in 1997, remember Jack Cunningham better known as "Junket Jack" he moved an entire floor of civil servants, so as to have a huge space for his own office, saying we are the masters now.

From day one; most of them were in it for the dosh, on the make.

Silent Hunter

How the hell can 30% of the population (according to the polls) STILL want to vote for this corrupt shower of B******d's?

Are ALL Labour voters really THAT stupid or just as plainly corrupt as the Labour Party they vote for.

Verity

A question for fat Jacqui: When are you and your pornophile husband going to improve the environment of Westminster by leaving it?

Tiberius

Silent Hunter: you answer the question of why Cameron is right to pursue policy incrementally.

Policy travelling on the back of an ICBM would take us back to the polling of William Hague's and IDS' time.

Hysteria

Delingpole today has a good take on the content of at least one of the movies - not that I care on a personal level - but adds to the "ridicule" meme....