The McPoison remains

Mitch

"It isn't over yet." but it soon will be and what a glorious feeling that is.
gordons shambolic government nears its end like some incontinent dog disgracing itself and creating a mess.

Fernando

There’s an interesting section on wilful blindness or contrived ignorance in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness

If you employ people like McBride and Draper can you realistically express surprise at their actions. After all what did Brown expect.

Nicholas

"It is a mark of a truly corrupt regime that it ceases to understand, morally or intellectually, the distinction between party and government."

Yes, it must go - and "regime" rather than government is the operative word. On behalf of the British people HM The Queen should suspend parliament now and insist that a GE is called. If the media allow Brown to get away with this it is the equivalent of Nixon avoiding his Watergate.

David Ossitt

Fernando.

"After all what did Brown expect"

Simple really; just what he got!

Paul Round

On reading your headline "McPoison",I assumed you were referring to Brown!

Obnoxio The Clown

McBride has gone.

But not for long.

Moraymint

Guys, I'm 51 years old, spent 20 years as a commissioned officer in the armed forces and, in the nicest possible sense (of course) have been around a bit.

I can't recall a time in my life when politicians and politics have been so unremittingly, dismayingly awful as they are today. How on earth did the British people invite into power such a dark, incompetent, corrupt bunch of bandits as this lot?

I'm not sure who dismays me the most: our political elite (ha!) or the uneducated, uncritical, gullible mass of British people who ever thought that the Blair/Brown/Campbell trio of creeps was ever going to lead this country to anywhere other than the gutter.

Well, here we are: a nation heading down to about as low is it gets economically, socially and politically. If the British people don't wake up soon and smell the coffee, we're stuffed.

It beggars belief that the UK could have spawned such a group of political gangsters and, moreover, let them play with the train set for so long. We're going to pay for this mess for at least a decade and, quite possibly, a generation. My only hope is that the British people will have at last learned the lesson that voting in a Labour adminstration always ends in tears. This time it will end in little short of a catastrophe.

Perhaps that's what you get when an unelected Prime Minister muscles into the job and who spent the previous 10 years working behind the scenes betraying the elected Prime Minister.

All this is worthy of Kafka.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Moraymint

Amen to that, but sadly many of these civilians have little understanding of honour, integrity nor even dignity. They are mediocre scum.

Athesius the Facilitator

Dear Mr Moraymint-Well said, why should I write anything on this blog when you do it so well for me.

By the way I hope that was the senior service you served in and not the Pongo's or the Crabs.

Hysteria

Moraymint - well said - as usual. My concern is that the folks in the CH do not represent the bulk of the public - hope I am wrong.

On a lighter note - Mrs H tells me the weather has been great up our way - hope the same is true for you over the weekend!

Guinevere

Oh for the days when someone might have been given a bottle of whisky and revolver - and trusted to do the honourable thing!

The current bunch will not own up to their mistakes, no matter how crass or obvious or impossible to cover up. The idea of duty, morale and decency seem to have been lost in the Government, civil service and town halls alike.

Anne Palmer

If YOU feel like that Matthew, how do you think the people feel that contribute towards their wages and their vast corruptible expences, and even then they cannot actually do the job of Governing this Country because they have given it away to foreigners to do. That is contrary to our own Constitution and it puts ALL the British people in a precarious position because if they obey foreign law they are in danger of violating their allegiance to the British Crown and also their own Government is going against the Coronation Oath Her Majesty made during Her Coronation, putting Her majesty in jeopardy also.

So where exactly does that leave us all?

Moraymint

Hysteria - glad to see you here - weather fine here in Moray. Spent the day building Stalag Luft III for Mrs Moraymint's hens. Allowed me to fume quietly about the state we're in, whilst catching some rays.

Ivy Eileen

Moraymint - amen to everything you write.

Trouble is that over the last 12 or so years the people of this country have been so "conditioned" that anything that smacks of integrity or honesty has gone.

Charlie

Moraymint. This state of affairs occurs because the Labour Party no longer contains people who have done a a hard and dangerous days work in their lives. When the Labour Party contained craftsmen and those who had worked on trawlers, in the mines, shipyards, construction sites and steel works; they understood the need for decency as their lives depended on the actions of others.

TGF UKIP

Splendid, splendid post, Moraymint! But as to how and why they got and get away with it, step forward the Great British Media - so easily and so cheaply bought.

What we now have to look forward to is the piece of news management out of Downing Street in the next 48 hours which the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Times etc will ensure buries the McBride episode.

Forget the Tory jellies, Guido is our only hope.

Bentos

I have never felt compelled to enter debates on websites, even on ones so prestigious as The Spectator's; but the events of this weekend involving McBride has tipped me "over the edge".

As a former career civil servant at HM Treasury, I recall all too well the day in 1997 when Brown, Balls and Whelan entered the building for the first time. To my horror, many of my colleagues congregated at the front door of HMT to welcome the triumvirate almost as conquering heroes. Worryingly, this seemed not to be an extension of the tradition at No10, where staff "clap in" a new Prime Minister (but only in the event of their having won a General Election); this clearly had political undertones.

And as time progressed, their power seemed ever to grow, with an expectation that Civil Servants be required to adopt a more "political" (i.e. New Lab) approach. This was amplified by the removal of the then (career Civil Servant) press officer and senior officials not seeming to have the courage to tell Brown or his henchmen that there was a line in the sand that Civil Servants should not be asked nor expected to cross. (I had worked in No 10 in a junior role some years previously, where there was a clear demarcation between Government and political business and where, if we thought our work was verging on the latter, we were able to refuse to carry out such tasks WITHOUT any fear of reprimand.)

Civil Servants, whatever their personal political views, should, from the moment they step into their office, be apolitical and work for the Government of the day, in the conduct ONLY of Government business.

Sadly, the Government has, since 1997, and to their eternal shame, undermined this , culminating in McBride - a CIVIL SERVANT - working essentially as a political special adviser and bringing the Civil Service into disrepute.

It is about time that the Head of the Civil Service, and senior Civil Servants in Departments fought back to re-establish the fine traditions that once were the hallmark of what was perhaps the finest Civil Service in the world and one that I was proud to work for.

The Laughing Cavalier

The most laughable aspect now that he is gone is the attempt to spin matters so as to give the impression he "did the honourable thing" by resigning. But there is no honour amongst these people. He was sacked, not because he did wrong in the eye of his Master, but because he got caught.

Moraymint

Bentos. Superb. I have been wondering for about a decade if HM Civil Service had indeed been destroyed by the political gangsters we've seen in office since 1997. Your post gives me some comfort that there may be hope yet. But only if a critical mass of senior civil servants take a stand and add to the pressure to get this most corrupt of British Governments out of office now (I hope a few of them are reading this and have the courage to move).

Philip

What gets to me is the heavily biast pro government stance of selected Journo's Marr,Boulton,White,Robinson.Peston etc who have all sold their souls for a scoop at the altar of Nu Labour.
If anything good has come out of this week's revelations its that unfettered blogging by the masses, in all its opinions and uncomfortable verbiage has exposed the MSM for what it really is a prostitute posing as a virgin.

bernado

kakistocracy (kak•is•toc•ra•cy) n.
Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

TGF UKIP

Bentos, no chance! O'Donnell is entirely political and has been a very willing accomplice of the Labour Party in government for the past twelve years.

Any future government, other than a Labour one, is going to have a major problem with internal sabotage from Labour's politicized civil service for decades to come.

Scot Richards

I find the venom in these comments very un-Christian which is disappointing at this time of year. When commenting about Brown and Blair keep in mind the Easter story. And be comforted that the Lord was crucified between two thieves.

Michael

Well Moraymint, you ask how did the British people elect this lot of plonkers? Because the plonkers in power after Mrs Thatcher fell from office were a complete shower. Lets not forget those five years when Major, Clarke & Heseltine were in charge.

D-503

If anyone reading this has not heard of the "Common Purpose" cult, you should make yourself familiar a.s.a.p.

Moraymint

Michael, it depends how you define Major, Clarke and Heseltine as being "a complete shower". I agree that the Tory Party had run out of steam and that, like all politicians (it seems to me), they were as sleazy as any other lot you care to mention. It seems to go with the territory.

However, the extent to which the Blair/Brown ticket has run this country into the deck is without precedent in modern times. Whatever one thinks of the previous Tory administration (not a lot in my case), at least they didn't steer the nation to damn-near banana republic status.

The UK is a laughing stock internationally right now: economically, politically and socially. We're in a huge mess and the Blair/Brown duo (ably led by creeps like Alistair Campbell and other taxpayer-funded spin doctors) will leave us battered citizens with hell to pay - whilst the politicos ride off into the sunset clutching their gold-plated pensions, speaking engagements, bathplugs, porn movie subscriptions and a shed load of taxpayers' blood, sweat and hard-earned cash.

I'm no Tory apologist, but oh boy we've been good and truly shafted by this Labour administration, and some. They're nigh-on criminals; they're certainly political gangsters.

I'm glad I never voted for the b******s.

Ken

TGF UKIP: Problem, what problem.

Day one of the new administration:
Fresh civil service exams for the lot. Anyone who can't jump the bar is out with no pension rights.

If such a promise were made public now, it would bring a lot of them to their senses forthwith.

Toadies.