A very powerful piece of writing by Bryan Forbes - Page 5

David Morton · 06-22-09, 03:00 AM

Today in the Commons will be very interesting as the ten MPs vying for the job of Speaker of the House of Commons, a job left vacant by 'Gorbals Mick' Michael Martin after he was forced out of office, will present their case on why they should be elected. What makes it much more interesting is that it should have been a democratic all party vote but Gordon Brown has interefered (again) and has had his 'Whips' out (yes - real people whos job it is to persuade party members to to things the Prime Minister bids them to do) and in this case Brown is trying to get people to vote for the incredibly thick skinned and incredibly noxious Margaret Becket. If ever a case for impeachment presents itself, then this is it.
The Speaker is entitled to a pension worth half their salary whenever they retire, regardless of how long they have served. Would Becket surrender that right? I doubt it. This job as speaker will only last until the General election which if Brown's house of cards comes tumbling down next week, then we will have the Election everybody else in the country except Brown wants and the job of Speaker is finished. If Becket is in power as the Speaker she will walk with accrued pensions around £125k, a title (minimum Baroness) and a guaranteed seat in the upper chamber. Snouts in the trough? Big time.............

Gill Hooper · 06-22-09, 03:40 AM

A Speaker needs to be fair, above party politics, dignified and commanding respect - a person of high moral integrity. I actually doubt whether there now is a MP who can fit the position.

Ian Anderson · 06-22-09, 03:53 AM

Pity Boris stood down when he took the Mayor's job!

Ian

David Morton · 06-22-09, 04:27 PM

I am really pleased. The reason - that beautiful smiling face of Margaret Becket (not) would have been too much for me and I would have had to stop watching the parliamentary channel. The Whips failed - that is the other reason I am pleased about. Then I heard the breaking news that Brown had to backtrack over the Iraq inquiry and it will now be in the public domain. Believe it or believe it not, the quiet and oft silent majority are beginning to win without being involved by becoming councillors and MPs just by continually bombarding those that are with letters voicing disquiet and discontent. John Bercow is the new Speaker of the House of Commons.
Let's see how long it is before he forgets his lines - but I bet he'll know the difference between and Early Day motion and a full blown debate !!!

JimmyMac · 06-22-09, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Morton

Let's see how long it is before he forgets his lines - but I bet he'll know the difference between and Early Day motion and a full blown debate !!!

Are you saying that he is able to distinguish between the product of a sphincter and a bunch of arseholes ?

David Morton · 06-22-09, 05:54 PM

Nicely put James. He is as guilty as any of them for corrupt and wild expenses. I would not trust him as far as I could throw him but I'm pleased Becket had it shoved up her well and truly. Until this afternoon, I think she and Brown thought she was going to walk it with the help of the Whips.

David Morton · 06-23-09, 02:36 AM

Probably the most powerful piece of writing in terms of it's disclosures is being released in the UK today. It's been a classified "Top Secret" document since 1979 and existed in other forms before that. Its name?............The War Book.
It details, amongst other things, who would be expected to be still alive after a Nuclear strike on the UK , what infrastructures would be needed to be re established, who would be allowed to take shelter, and possibly - who would not - in the various bunkers in the UK (Yes- we had them and there are still bunkers in use that are scattered around) There may be some very contentious revelations in this document and I expect an internet version
to be on the fibre optics - well on the tired old copper wire really - by tomorrow morning.
As an aside, you may have seen some of these bunkers scattered around the landscape. Sometimes known as RSGs (Regional Seats of Government) some were well concealed - others not quite that well. I saw one where it looked like a pair of old refridgerators stood in the middle of a field and a gate and doors into a small underground carpark in the next field alongside. This carpark would once have housed quite a few army vehicles such as Land Rovers. The old ones were always being sold in Auctions to make room for new ones in case you ever wondered why 15 yr old Rovers with little or no mileage kept appearing at the auctions. The RSGs were stocked with communications equipment and loads of food etc and everything for a holiday in a field you could ever imagine. What a job just maintaining it all !!
You could even have a wonderful time just looking for them on Google Earth.
-if that is your thing.

David Morton · 06-24-09, 02:51 AM

Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker

Essex

Although no longer secret (it is open to the public), during the Cold War Kelvedon Hatch, fronted by an innocuous bungalow, was a subterranean bunker 38m below the surface

David Morton · 06-24-09, 03:03 AM

An insight on what might have been.

Prepare for nuclear war: How Britain (divided into 12 police states) would have dealt with doomsday | Mail Online

David Morton · 06-25-09, 04:43 AM

It seems that the Prime Minister Gordon Brown doesn't have a clue about the regard in which his government is held by the public at large. As late as yesterday afternoon he, along with his crony Harman was still planning on a public top up to the MPs gold plated pension fund. It all crumbled just after afternoon tea Brown ditches plan to get public to bail out MPs' pensions | Mail Online.

Another couple of MPs have been exposed claiming interest on a mortgage for a house that apparently has been boarded up for several months. I would have thought they knew they were about to be exposed by the Telegraph list and would have confessed earlier rather than keeping it in the 'family'. MPs' expenses: Alan and Ann Keen designate boarded up house as main home - Telegraph

It will run and run for a long time yet. AND slapping wrists is not an option.....

David Morton · 07-02-09, 05:01 AM

It had to happen but it is just beyond belief. Michael Martin, the former Speaker in the House of Commons, also known as Gorbels Mick, will have a peerage - a title if you like - and be allowed to sit in the upper house - The House of Lords.
The Queen has decreed it so.
Is she off her trolley as well. It was this man, Gorbels Mick, http://www.rtiindia.org/forum/1285-u...c-expense.html , who tried to cover up and stop the inquiry into the MPs expenses. It really is just too much....

David Morton · 07-13-09, 03:50 AM

From the Daily Mail on line:

Bob Ainsworth:

A former Left-wing car union activist and Coventry city councillor, Mr Ainsworth was ironically once a candidate member of the International Marxist Group - which supported the IRA against British Army 'imperialism'.
Political lightweight

Last year he claimed £23,083 for second home allowance, joint highest of all MPs and vastly more than the salaries of the three 18-year-old soldiers killed in Afghanistan last Friday.

Mr Ainsworth is a political lightweight who has never taken a real risk in his life, and his appointment to such a crucial ministry is an unmitigated scandal.

Equally scandalous is that he is the fourth Defence Secretary in just three years.

If you want to complain about Gordon Brown's decision to appoint this idiot, pick up your pen and write to Brown at No 10. You know it makes sense.......

Pete McCluskey. · 07-13-09, 07:07 AM

The sad thing David is, it seems that the Westminster system upon which our Government is also based and once was the bastion of democracy and honourable men, has become a model of corruptness and greed also.
However, I live in hope that honour and integrity will return. I fear that times will get a lot tougher before that happens.

David Morton · 07-19-09, 05:01 AM

If you can read this without getting a lump in your throat, you are a stronger man than me. In fact it made me weep.
My boy Jack - a father¿s diary charts the death of his gallant son in Afghanistan and his anger at the reasons | Mail Online

Andy · 07-19-09, 08:15 AM

I'll second that David. Reading the paper first thing, my tea went cold. Kinda spoilt my day. Now the truth is getting to be more widely known, lets hope they start to urgently plug the holes in the kit they are sending them out with.

Keith 'Baron' Hardy · 07-19-09, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Morton

An insight on what might have been.

Prepare for nuclear war: How Britain (divided into 12 police states) would have dealt with doomsday | Mail Online

I just caught up on this thread and I'd like to contribute some anecodotes. My father, who was too old for the armed forces in WWII served his time on the Southampton anti-aircraft rocket batteries at Marchwood and following VJ day, was "demobbed" from the Home Guard and enlisted in the newly formed Civil Defence unit with a prime responsibility of being a local warden. My earliest recollection of him when he wasn't touring (classical musician) was dressed in black battledress with a battered white tin hat with "Civil Defence Warden" on it.

As a kid, I often took part in training exercises as a volunteer "casualty" and had to lie in the street (around the Town Hall usually) with rasberry jam smeared on me, hoping the medics would get there before the wasps. We had a piece of paper hidden about our persons which described the full detail of our "injuries" (usually radiation or flash burns) which were emulated by the jam.

Laughable isn't the word for it in light of what we now know - but it was a total sham - there was no-way anyone would survive, as at that time we were a mere 12 miles from the centre of London and close to Biggin Hill, Kenley & Croydon, all WWII RAF airfields and thus targets.

It was opium for the people to shut them up, to make it seem survivable and my dad was really keen to do his bit, but they humiliated him and the other thousands of volunteers who gave their time for nowt trying to convince people they could survive. Put a mattress on top of you and seal off the windows with a blanket. Yeah right...

The regional centres were a fact and they still pop up from time to time. I have been in one such centre, which not many people know about even now. If I tell you it is within 100 yds of Basingstoke Station and deep below an inoccuous looking office block, then someone might guess where it is. It's all there, accomodation for about 100 people, air filtration, sleeping quarters and a medical centre. It's proximity to the main railway line from London cannot have been a coincidence.

Public survivability be damned! Room only for 100 of Britain's "finest".

I've a lot more on this era and it's implications, but that will do for now. Thanks for your patience.

Keith 'Baron' Hardy · 07-19-09, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Morton

If you can read this without getting a lump in your throat, you are a stronger man than me. In fact it made me weep.
My boy Jack - a father¿s diary charts the death of his gallant son in Afghanistan and his anger at the reasons | Mail Online

No words Dave, but was it ever so.....

We don't have a great history of taking care of our own...

They've always been expected to fight against superior odds with duff gear but you would have thought they'd (MOD) have learned by now.

Ironically, in the "Great Conflict" the British Army was VERY well supplied, but not with good trenches. The official line was that the troops "might get too comfortable and lose the will to fight" Instead they lost something more precious - their lives.

Helmets that don't fit, a 2.5 litre diesel pulling 5.5 tons, dodgy ammunition?

Ye Gods!

Pete McCluskey. · 07-19-09, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Morton

If you can read this without getting a lump in your throat, you are a stronger man than me. In fact it made me weep.
My boy Jack - a father¿s diary charts the death of his gallant son in Afghanistan and his anger at the reasons | Mail Online

So sad, it is always the young that suffer because of the lack of political support.
Those sad bastard bureaucrats that sit in the air conditioned offices counting beans and deciding to buy kit from the lowest tenderer should be deployed for three Months with the troops in combat.
I'm sure then things might change.
I get so bloody angry when I read stuff like this that words fail me.

David Morton · 07-28-09, 08:20 AM

Well, the bastards are at it again. They have agreed to operate a system whereby they can claim £25 per day - without receipts - for subsistence. It's not the amount that annoys me. In fact I spent £150 last night for dinner for five of us in W. London, but it's the way they have sneaked in the 'without receipts'. Every company I ever worked for insisted on receipts for every petty cash pound I ever spent if I claimed it as expenses.
One company had a brilliant system. Your Petty Cash Voucher would be held for 12 months along with the receipt you submitted attached to it. About 5% of new claims were randomly examined every quarter and if yours was fraudulent - you were history.
Quite a few of our MPs are seemingly incapable of doing anything honest and will continue to rip the arse out of the system and we have just let them get away with it again.
I beg you to write to the P.M. Brown and express your disgust and dismay at this system which has just been put in place.

MPs' allowance

Last Updated: Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 02:11 GMT
- Search: MPs allowances

MPs have introduced new rules that allow them to claim £25 a night without producing a receipt.
The subsistence allowance, worth £9,125 a year, was introduced this month in a new parliamentary green book.
More News

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UK Parliament

According to the Daily Telegraph, the rules were agreed by a small committee of MPs chaired by Speaker John Bercow and including Commons Leader Harriet Harman and her Tory shadow Alan Duncan.
The rules appear to have been approved without any debate in the Commons before MPs left for the summer recess.
In the wake of the expenses scandal in April, MPs voted for a series of measures that included the requirement of receipts for everything claimed.
But the green book for July, published on the Parliament website, states: "A flat-rate sum of £25 may be claimed for any night which a Member spends away from his or her main home on parliamentary business...
"No receipt is necessary in respect of the flat-rate

I am so pissed off that this replacement Speaker has put this through -
I think he should be strung up at Speakers Corner (Marble Arch)
and his decaying body be picked over by the crows and ravens of London.
Please write and voice your complaints if you disagree with what Speaker Bercow has done - every letter counts.

David Morton · 07-30-09, 06:30 AM

I will now turn the venom - of which I have copious amounts donated by all sorts of well wishers which, when directed at incompetent Members of Parliament such as the Secretary of State for Defence - a so called man by the name of Robert Ainsworth. This has to be one of the most inappropriate appointments that the Prime Minister Brown has made but in his defence (I would never defend him really) he is running out of such idiots as this to promote to the cabinet.
Andrew Roberts in the Mail On Line has written a superb article and here is a link to it.
It would be better for our boys if Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth stayed on holiday | Mail Online
I will stop temporarily while the 3rd test gets going then I will return to Ainsworth
and his lost cause. At the end of this governments life, idiots such as him will have to live with the judgements they made whilst in office for the rest of their lives. The same as Woolas and the Gurkhas will never be forgotten. I will make sure of that.