Owen Patterson and sleaze- a shameful day in the House

Imagine that cabinet!! The pure and simple reassuring common sense and decency. Politics for the benefit of ordinary people not politics as a performing art honed at Eton and The Garrick Club to benefit the very few. Politics by people with passion, soul and a vocation rather than people who want to be King of the World.

I dream of it, Scones.

I have absolutely no idea now who I would vote for in a general election. Boris, Angela Rayner, Caroline, the Lib Dems , ( not even sure who’s leading them) - what a shower of point scoring screechers . Re the Owen Paterson affair- you cannot change the rules of the game in the middle of it - however, a monitoring or inspection system in place, with no right of appeal, also seems wrong. Maybe I am just getting very old and grumpy but the calibre of most people in charge of anything at the moment is woefully low - for example - politicians, NHS managers, care home managers, sports managers, university managers, Social service managers, DVLA managers, .... the list goes on. Some of them get paid so much - too much to care whether or not they are doing an effective job. Perhaps a tiny part of the inefficiency is due to Covid but the whole shebang is quite depressing.

montymops

I have absolutely no idea now who I would vote for in a general election. Boris, Angela Rayner, Caroline, the Lib Dems , ( not even sure who’s leading them) - what a shower of point scoring screechers . Re the Owen Paterson affair- you cannot change the rules of the game in the middle of it - however, a monitoring or inspection system in place, with no right of appeal, also seems wrong. Maybe I am just getting very old and grumpy but the calibre of most people in charge of anything at the moment is woefully low - for example - politicians, NHS managers, care home managers, sports managers, university managers, Social service managers, DVLA managers, .... the list goes on. Some of them get paid so much - too much to care whether or not they are doing an effective job. Perhaps a tiny part of the inefficiency is due to Covid but the whole shebang is quite depressing.

I think you are just getting old and grumpy. You sound just like my grandfather 60 years ago

Quite extraordinary that the arrangements for monitoring parliamentary standards and for sanctioning MPs who break them were set up by John Major some 20+ years ago and no-one has seen fit to question the procedures until one of the corrupt MPs in this corrupt government was caught blatantly being paid large sums of money for using his influence to lobby on behalf of two businesses.

Have you read the actual report? The committee's investigations took 2 years and Paterson was questioned by them several times, plenty of opportunity to argue his case. It's all there in the report.

Do posters think the light is getting through, that after the latest disgraceful episode that people are actually making their feelings known to those who represent them in sufficient numbers to cause this band of corrupt yes men to rethink their modus operandi. ?
John Major's interview gave me hope . It will get huge coverage , let's hope it has the effect necessary to give impetus to the moral members of the Tory party so they can apply pressure to oust the rot within.

I think Maisie D, that some members of the whole Parliament are corrupt - not just this government.
I also still think it is wrong that there is no right of appeal after the ‘judge and jury’ have made their decision.

But the two year standards committee is where you get the chance to put your case so, if someone if found to be guilty why should they then be able to appeal. The evidence was overwhelming.

Applegran

Did you hear John Major on today's (Saturday's) Today programme on Radio 4? It was a well argued, well evidenced, total attack on Johnson and his sense of having the power to do as he likes - having a large majority of MPs on the basis of just 29% of the electoral vote.

Good for John Major ?

I've just read that Kathryn Stone has been given police protection because there have been threats against her life. Last week, hardly anybody had heard of her, before the disgraceful smear campaign against her by the media and Kwasi Kwarteng. Appalling!

Growstuff, that is absolutely disgusting, what's the matter with people?

montymops

I think Maisie D, that some members of the whole Parliament are corrupt - not just this government.
I also still think it is wrong that there is no right of appeal after the ‘judge and jury’ have made their decision.

Would you like it to go all the way to the Supreme Court, then? Or perhaps the European Court of Human Rights?

The Independent Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards investigated. She reported her findings to the Select Committee who then thoroughly reinvestigated over a couple of years. Paterson had plenty of chances to convince them that his side of the story was correct.

I don't know if you saw the article I posted yesterday from the inews? About 2 dozen other tory MPs who'd been investigated by the standards committee? They, when found to have breached the standards, threw their hands up, said 'It's a fair cop', rectified their mistake and apologised. End of story. No wailing for an appeal...

Of course, that was just for fairly minor offences. Clearly, the bigger the offence, the more exempt from sanction you think you should be...

On the theme of sleaze.

Last month Raab declared a £10k donation from a director of Southern Water.

Wonder what he wanted in return?

We all know why they wanted to change the rules now - just pretend it was for OP- when it is in expectation of the allegations and enquiries about the BIG guy /s!

Mustique

Flat refurb

Marbella

all need a proper independent investigation NOW

In the Register of Member’s Interests a £10k donation was logged on 23 Sep to Raab from Jiri Zrust. Jiri Zrust is Senior Managing Director of Macquarie Group. On 9th August Macquarie Group bought majority stake in Southern Water.

I don't suppose there was any connection with the Lords' amendment to the Environment Bill about the use of storm overflows just a couple of weeks later.

Just so

If ever there was "Newspeak", it is this morning. George Eustace has appeared on both "Trevor Phillips" and "Marr" this morning.

According to the Conservative Sleaze Defence (GE), this row is all the oppositions fault - well, they would say that, wouldn't they? But, via GE, The Cons are STILL insisting that this was all reasonable. They still want to change the process. So still trying to save Wonky Johnson then.

Johnson not attending today, and refusing to answer all questions of this today.

Thank you Keir Starmer for saying as it is -

fb.watch/99c8A4e8Q7/

Well, I've just watched the whole debate and there wasn't much love for the government coming from the tory side of the house.

Maskless Rees Mogg, who, several MPs pointed out, as Leader of the House, really should have given the government response rather than Steven Baker, sat through the whole 2.5 hours looking very glum.

No apology forthcoming from the PM, though..

Flustered Boris claims there is 'nothing more to say' on Owen Paterson case as he DODGES emergency Commons sleaze showdown and refuses to apologise for shambles - with poll showing Labour ahead for first time in a YEAR

Headline in the Daily Mail

Only something like 35 Tories bothered to turn up. They are too arrogant to even bother defending their position.

Meanwhile their leader was trotting around a hospital and the only one who gave no consideration to the staff by not wearing a mask

Actually, opinion has it that Johnson is using the mask less ness as a dead cat to attempt take away headlines from the corruption debate.

I can go along with that.

Soroptimum

I care, and I’m absolutely sickened by this latest news. A morally corrupt government that just changes the rules when it suits them. And the fact that the MP has tried to blame the investigation into his malpractice was partly to blame for his wife’s suicide is unbelievable.
Mr Soroptidad is a Tory and Brexiter, but he doesn’t say much about what’s going on any more!

How do you know the stress caused by these investigations didn’t have anything to do with the poor womans death. Awful thing to say.

She was involved with the company at the heart of all this.

No-one is saying the investigation didn't have anything to do with her tragic death. Any partner/spouse of someone having to go through any Court for any criminal behaviour will tell you how stressful it is. In this case however, it does seem clear that Mrs Paterson was not a silent and totally innocent bystander, and that some of the payments for lobbying were through her own contacts via her own position.

Tragic it certainly was, but you can't stop investigations because of the stress it causes to the accused or his/her family.