John Butterfill won't get a peerage...

Vulture

'Butterfill' like 'Passchendaele' is onomatopaeic - with its delicious connotations of filling boots with oodles of golden butter.

Though paling into insignificance compared to the rampant corruption of ByersHoonHewitt
old Butters will be another greedy scumbag we won't miss.

Incidentally, Nick Robinson has confirmed my early suspicion that the dirty paws of Bruin are behind this: NR says it was all orchestrated by Bruin's gopher namesake Nick Bruin as revenge for the last Bliarite plot to unseat the Prime Monster.

This country is glugging down the plughole.

Neil McEvoy

I thought his pompous self-regard made him easily the least appealing of the dupes.

Greenslime

Make the Lords 100% elected and bring in a law that ALL lawmakers may not accept ANY payment from ANYONE else whilst they are in the pay of the people (if they are in it for the money and are as good as they think they are, they will flourish in business) - then attach to this law swingeing gaol terms for anyone who breaches that responsibility. A couple of these pig-swill eating animals doing some real time at a max security establishment will focus the minds no end.

Off-piste, but while I'm at it, any MPs who vote to go to war should be forced to join the infantry and serve at least one full front-line tour in the theatre.

Tom Pride

Good follow through article by Dominic Lawson on the morality of the political Left and Right.

"The belief that liberals care more about the poor may scratch a partisan or ideological itch, but the facts are hostile witnesses."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-if-you-want-to-detect-hypocrisy-in-a-public-figure-try-utleys-law-1925430.html

Ian

The only Lords he will go to will be in St. John's Wood

Moriarty

@greenslime

great idea. Make ALL politicians elected that way there can be no corruption....oh hang on...

Chuck Unsworth

@ Greenslime

I think you'll find that those Peers who are or have been involved in ripping off the taxpayers and using their positions for personal gain are appointees rather than hereditaries.

What chance is there of a fully elected Upper House displaying any more probity, honour and integrity than the fully elected Lower House?

Chuck Unsworth

So, tragically, Butterfill won't get a Peerage. Will he, nonetheless, get the full payoff and pension when he's ousted? If so, why?

Coeur de Lion

Sadly, Butterfill was the archetypal Tory public image - overweight, self-indulgent,pompous, upper middle class diction, detached from the real world. Hugely damaging.

Roy Simpson

Mandelson's comments that it's all "...extremely sad and disappointing and all rather grubby" demonstrates, as if we didn't know already, what a sanctimonious hypocrite he is.

Tankus

Made me laugh.....

denis cooper

The question we should ask is this - how do people get to be MPs, with some of them later getting moved on to the Lords?

Putting it another way, what is the system for supplying us with MPs? Because that supply system is obviously failing to produce MPs of the required quality.

If a similarly defective system operated for say, doctors, then we'd be saying that the medical colleges must be reformed so that they would provide us with better doctors. Not necessarily fewer doctors, but better doctors.

Well, of course the answer is that all but two of the present MPs were supplied by political parties - pre-selected and selected from their small and shrinking party memberships, strongly recommended to the electorate as official party candidates, and actively promoted and supported during their election campaigns.

In fact, 94% of the present MPs - and close to 100% of those implicated in various forms of wrong-doing - were supplied by just three UK-wide parties, with the remaining 6% of MPs having been elected as the official candidates of regional parties such as the SNP.

It's no good party leaders like Brown and Cameron and Clegg huffing and puffing and condemning individual MPs who had only become MPs because their parties had chosen them to become MPs, any more than the principle of a bad medical college should be allowed to shuffle off the blame by condemning individual doctors who were only allowed to practise as doctors because his college had awarded them the necessary qualifications.

Yet at the same time as those three main parties have proved themselves incapable of reliably supplying good quality MPs, they are absolutely determined to protect their oligopoly by blocking anybody else from becoming an MP.

On TV last night a discontented member of the public was asked whether she'd consider becoming an MP herself, and she didn't dismiss that idea out of hand; but of course between them Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats would use their advantages of incumbency to make damn sure that she wouldn't get elected.

How different the coming general election would be if those three corrupt and degenerate political gangs had totally collapsed, and were no longer in a position to prevent better people getting elected to Parliament.

Greenslime

Moriarty & CU
Making both houses entirely elected will not, of course, ensure probity. But it will make them more removeable. With or without election to the chamber, exemplary punishments for breaking clearly defined laws (which is another thing which has to be done) will concentrate their minds. In the end, there will always be people who will think that they can get away with it, cleverer than the system. Perhaps some will be. But the fear that they just might not be, may deter many who are so inclined. Just a thought.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Greenslime.

So how often are these elections to be held? Say, for example, an elected Peer decides he'll rip off the taxpayers, how long before
a) the taxpayers find out and,
b) the taxpayers actually can vote him/her out and,
c) under what terms will the contract be terminated?

In the meantime the troughing would go on unabated - as we have already seen.

Tiberius

A point to note for those who don't think Cameron is capable of a tap in.

Fred Blogs

No peerage, but Butterfillyerboots has got his 15 minutes of fame. If you're a nobody, it's well worth it.

Noa Zrk

"He's a big lad and a bonny lad and he wanted to be a peer,
And they call him Lord Butterfill and I wish he was here!

With apologies to George Ridley

AngloWelshDragon

Butterfill? In the immortal words of my Lord Gnome "Who he?"

2trueblue

What else should he have done?

Harvey Taylor

As the independent candidate for Bournemouth West I was at a business leaders meeting last night with all the other candidates from Bournemouth West and East.

The one 'Sir'-prising absentee was 'Sir' John Butterfill's hopelessly optimistic, would-be replacement, Conor Burns (con). Even more startling was Burn's sick note - he was at 'Sir' John's farewell dinner.

When are the party politicians going to get it?!? The public want restorative justice, not fond farewells!Join the campaign to get 'Sir' John stripped of his knighthood at www.harveytaylor.wordpress.com

Harvey Taylor Independent Bmth West

The plot thickens. Conor Burns now 'launches thinly veiled attack' on 'Sir'John Butterfill in the Bournemouth ECHO. Butterfill responds by saying he may take action against these extraordinarily edited comments. And the rest of us are still wondering, just why did you go to the ball, Conor? (i.e. Butterfill's leaving do). Was this the price you had to pay to keep the local conservative association on side in this not so 'safe' seat?

Time we had an MP who is in a position to represent the WHOLE of Bournemouth West and is not in thrall to the local party. That's why I am standing. What exactly ARE you doing in Bournemouth West, Conor? Eastleigh get too hot?