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AEMiller_Croydon

Listed below are comments made by AEMiller_Croydon between Monday, 1st June 2009 and Friday, 18th September 2009.

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The axe begins to swing 11:32am on 18 Sep 2009 Gordon Brown's continual denial of the obvious reality over the last year has been breathtaking in it's stupidity. Obviously the government rescue package has to be paid for - even the dumbest twonk can see this. He has played into Cameron's hands and made a bad situation catastrophic. Or perhaps that should be he has made an ecconomic catasrophy politicall catastrophic. They will now beat him to death with his own obviously false denials.
Can Brown stay silent? 2:05pm on 24 Aug 2009 Dr Harold Shipman 218. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi 270. No politician would have ever dared even breath that Mr Shipman should ever be released (if he hadn't topped himself) any more than Ian Brady or Myra Hindley. It's fair enough to many people that life shouldn't always mean life but call me old fashioned here but I do think 270 lives should mean life. But somehow Britain's greatest murderer of all time gets to just walk away? Why? If there is doubt over his conviction this will only cloud the issue and leave the many unanswered questions even opaquer. And even if he didn't actually buy the equipment there's no question that he was very high up in the Lybian secret service and knew of the plot so he isn't innocent. There is no doubt this will be turned into a PR coup by Colonel Gadaffi - a very ruthless man who's just bright enough to know on which side his bread is buttered. This is one of the worst judicial / policy gaffes of all time. I dont think it will actually be good for Libya either. There's always a bit of a grey area in measuring between political expediency / the greater good and justice for terrorists but I really think that in this case there is no greater social or political objective and the crime was so vile there is no excuse for letting him out. This isn't a man who killed someone in a fit of passion or a bungled robbery this is a man who was part of a regime that set out to calously murder 270 people in cold blood for their own repugnant political ends. And no one's really stupid enough to believe that no pressure or influence would have been exerted from Whitehall on Holyrood
Surreal politics 5:35pm on 22 Jul 2009 Gone very quiet the "star chamber", haven't they?
Funny how the never got round to deselecting a single minister.
Moats, Mortgages and Mayhem 1:53pm on 29 Jun 2009 I think when you bring up the subject of How Much rather than What On? you miss two philosophical points. Firstly, although an MP can claim £23,000 in ACA and turn this into an asset to buy things by buying a larger house than he needs at and then treating it as a disposable asset and scaling down at a later date .... there's a shamelessness in claiming for items that are clearly not needed like dog food or mock tudor beams. An I'm-not-even-going-to-bother-to-conceal-it-because-no-one-cares-and-I'm-beyond-criticism factor. My second point which follows on from this first is that this lack of scruitiny of MPs expenses is in sharp contrast to the extremely parsimonous means testing that anyone in the benefits system is subject to - and the ACA is effectively a means tested benefit. But whereas if you or I were to sign on or claim housing benefit we'd be required to fill in a 40 page form, it seems all MPs had to do was in some cases fill out a form saying "I spent 400 pound on food" and no questions were asked. I think it is this that rankles. The situation is blurred by giving an allowence that turns into a disposable asset. Most people who get a housing benefit dont get a house or part of a house from it.
Fewer votes for BNP 11:58am on 08 Jun 2009 I felt the Labour campaign leaflets were wrong. They literally said in some cases "Vote for us or you'll let the BNP in". People need a better reason to vote than "if you dont the BNP will get in". The BNP are a bunch of very nasty people indeed. But "at least we're not the racists" is not really a platform to stand on. Also in the light of the expenses scandal the "we're not as bad as the others" arguement doesn't wash. One of the reasons Labour swept to power in 97 was revulsion at Tory sleaze. Harriet Harmen has a point when she says that "people expect that sort of behaviour from the Tories". The moral high ground the party used to stand on has turned beneath their feet to quicksand.
Three extraordinary personal decisions 4:19pm on 05 Jun 2009 45 Of course in order to claim Brown is totally unelected you have to able to argue that at the time of the general election the public knew Blair was going to go which it seems they did.
Someone said before that they didn't and this confused me but I did find this
factpage from Channel4 which would see to show that the reason for this is that
the truth its self is fascinatingly opaque.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/when%20did%20blair%20promise%20to%20step%20down/169525
Ending his party's conference in Brighton - as well as dropping the bombshell he was to have heart surgery - Mr Blair said: "If I'm selected I would serve a third term - I do not want to serve a fourth term.

However, you could argue with some sophistry that this gives Mr Brown
more of a mandate than Jim Callahan or John Major when they took over...?

Let's face it Brown's government isn't going to go till it absolutely has to.
Turkeys dont vote for Christmas.
Starting gun fired on leadership contest 1:22pm on 03 Jun 2009 Well, she's not exactly a Geoffrey Howe and I doubt after her expenses behaviour her going will evince that much empathy with anyone. There's still about 400 Labour MPs to pick ministers from. Gordon Brown should have propelled her posterior to the roadside with his shoeleather with much more alacrity. But then again violent dispatches are not really his style. Far more fun to let the wolves turn on her while turning a blind eye. It's easy when you're Cameron to sack someone quickly - you don't have to form a government from your minions.
Chancellor in distress 5:00pm on 02 Jun 2009 281. At 3:36pm on 02 Jun 2009, Boilerplated wrote:
#274

""How about the only Prime Minister NEVER to face an election?"

"Not again, how many times, ...."

Well, you could argue that people knew when Tony Blair was elected that he was going to resign mid-term because he stated it and they also knew that Gordon Brown was most likely to succeed.
So you could argue that while he wasn't elected neither was he not elected.
In any case he still has more of a mandate than Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Jim Callahan or John Major did when they took over ...in all of these cases one could argue that neither of them had faced an election before they had faced an election and the public had no idea when they took over that their would be a change of leader.

John Major too was the only Prime Minister NEVER to face an election before he'd faced an election... I mean Sir Alec Douglas-Home wasn't even an MP till he resigned to stand at a by-election.
Come to think of it neither is Peter Mandelson ... but probably he'd find it harder to find a constituency who would vote for him than Sir Alec did...
Chancellor in distress 1:25pm on 02 Jun 2009 I agree with thomasak001. Darling's explanation is more than reasonable. We're talking 500 over three months because he forgot to inform them a bill he paid three months earlier covered the next three months when he didn't know when he put the claim in that his situation would change. Like a bottle of Corona it's very very small beer. Particularly when compared with the activities of Ms Blears. You dont have to be John Maynard Keynes to realise that while MPs may need a second home to offer to pay a mortgage on an asset that doesn't revert back to the taxpayer when they cease being an MP is the eqivalent to giving them a tax free pay rise and someone as highly intelligent as Mr Cameron or Ms Blears is going to turn this to their advantage by managing to figure out ways to continually claim as much mortgage interest as possible. Of course if this was a working man who wanted a housing benefit then the means testing would be as scrupulous and parsimonious as possible which is what the public really resent.
Westminster's answer to Britain's Got Talent 2:07pm on 01 Jun 2009 I love it the way whenever a Prime Minister goes on television it's somehow a news story that he says he's not going to resign - like he was going to go on and have some magical moment of clarity that leads him to suddenly say "Yes, erm, actually I'm rubbish. You're right, I should quit"

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