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Alistair Thomas

Listed below are comments made by Alistair Thomas between Friday, 3rd July 2009 and Friday, 27th November 2009.

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Why did Bank of England keep shtoom? 2:12pm on 27 Nov 2009 If these two banks really were bust, and we the public really were going to do what ever it took to prop up the bits we needed then I wish we had taken the chance to bin the bits we didn't need.

I'm sure there were some liabilities that needed to be backed to preserve confidence in the worldwide financial system, but equally, there were bound to be some deals with some banks where they provided worthless security that they knew or should have known were worthless that we could elect not to take on. Let them sue the old entity and its management.

We certainly should have fired the executive boards and calculated minimum pension liabilities, and any unpaid bonus entitlement would be against the old bank (insolvent). New contracts should have been offered to those employees wanting to be part of the new bank.

The idea that anybody in the finance system or those that regulated it are getting a bonus or a juicy pension that isn't written explicitly into an employment contract is frankly obscene. These loans, secret or otherwise, could have achieved a much higher, harder value for the tax payer than government obtained for them.
Expenses, Libya and the pound 10:49am on 21 Oct 2009 Reading the the soldiers' names reeks of politics - it's unsightly to see them competing with each other to be more compassionate, or even to read the names without stuttering. Couldn't the speaker do it once for everybody?

Jacqui Smith, The Balls's - just a couple of the big Labour names not called to book in the expenses farce. At least Blears and now Brown have had to pay something back. The elevation of an apparently common criminal (court case pending you would like to think but don't hold your breath) to the peerage should be enough to make any Englishman's (Scottish, Welsh, Irish not to be missed by "British Person's" sounded lame and PC) blood boil. But it's so common it hardly passes without remark these days; Martin, Mandelson; all with shady dealings to their credit, all elevated with regard for public taste. Good on the people of Redditch for raising a standard of public decency. It seems this government in particular and parliament as an institution know no shame.
General gimmick? 2:26pm on 07 Oct 2009 Oh Nick, you really are a stirrer. Grayling didn't dismiss government working with army generals as a gimmick, indeed he says that ideally that's exactly what should be happening: Generals and Government working hand in hand.

Clearly, even though he thinks this a good idea, he suspects, even expects that anything this cynical and PR craving government would do would be for political reasons rather than for any particular good of the country. Given the history of the last decade, you have to admit he has a point!
Cameron aide emerges unscathed 4:31pm on 22 Jul 2009 Labour wanted us to see this as a story about judgement or lack of it, and strangely, at the end of it all, that's what it has become.

With no new evidence of dastardly dealings already fairly well investigated by the police et al, Labour launch an attack against a man who when faced with unacceptable practices that occurred on his watch, he accepted full responsibility, apologised and then resigned.

This is the same Labour party that when embarrassed by Smeargate, something equally shocking and despicable, allowed the guilty party to resign rather than firing him, whilst the top man accepted full responsibility for the actions on his watch and then did absolutely nothing about it. Indeed he is still there encouraging the discredited and the unbelievable from his own party to launch attacks from their glass houses on someone who has already paid the price for his error.

Having failed to land a new punch on Coulson, indeed taking a counter punch from Coulson who it now turns out is a victim himself of the whole affair, they have not only failed in their real objective of showing Cameron to have poor judgement, they have promoted his sense of fair play in giving a second chance to someone who has paid for his errors and enhanced his integrity for sticking by that decision in the face of unsubstantiated media slur.

If there has been poor judgement in this case, it is surely Labour's for getting involved with such a tawdry and badly prepared case and drawing comparisons on themselves between how responsible people act when faced with difficulty and how they acted over Smeargate.

The sad thing is that this will not even cause a ripple in pubic opinion for Labour because everybody expects them to be feckless hypocrites already.
Green shoots and wind turbines 11:09am on 20 Jul 2009 BlameGame, I do agree that the only way of taking R4's slot for McBride this morning is a blatant attempt to paint a rosy picture around him and allow Labour to ease him back in. It's one thing to let him tell his side of the story but if the presenters are not going to challenge him for what he is and what he has done then at least bring someone in "from the other side" to tear him to shreds for a bit of balance. Listening to him today it was as if he was a choir boy merely retaliating for years of hate PR from Tories et al. Still, it's what we've come to expect from Auntie.

Now that politics seems to have shut down for the summer (and half the autumn) I wanted to comment on something Portillo said on the last "ThisWeek". He was mourning the loss of reform fever, and he is absolutely right. He was saying that with everything falling to bits around our ears there has never been a better time in our lifetime for reform. If a fairer, more people oriented system could rise from the ashes of the old, it would give some purpose to all the pain and suffering.

With Economic ruin, Smeargate, Expensesgate and two of the most damning polls in history, Labour just put their fingers in their ears and sing "La, la, la, la, I'm not listening" and the drive for reform and hot debate by the three main parties gets replaced with a weariness from the public. It doesn't matter how many times and in how many ways the public tell Labour that they want a vote, a new mandate, Labour just drag it out to the bitter end until the hunger for reform is replaced with a desperate "Anything but Labour". The next government won't have to cede anything back to the public just so long as they are not Labour. I used to think that a decade of Spin, lies and deceit had to be Labour's worst crime. That is probably still the case, but denying the public a real chance of timely reform, especially before the next phase of Euro federalism is stitched up too, has to be almost as bad.
Gordon Brown in the firing line 5:52pm on 14 Jul 2009 I can't say I enjoyed your mauling of Bill Rammell yesterday since his non answers and spin maid me feel sick. But thank you for putting him and his area of responsibility in the spotlight. I suppose he only has lies to sell so we shouldn't be too hard on him, but all the 60% increase nonsense and throwing around massive numbers as investment when they are just as likely to be reductions on what was promised is just morally bankrupt.

I suppose it just means that defence is no different to any other are of mismanagement by this government. It's bad enough when it's people's livelihoods and the country's economic prospects on the line but when it young soldier's lives, how do these people sleep at nights?

With the country at war, we really should be putting our best foot forward and leaving no stone unturned to make things better on the front line. Bob Ainsworth. Is that it? Is that really the best we can do. Pathetic!

I'll be relieved when MPs go on holiday. They're completely feckless so the dereliction of duty when we have troops under fire will make little difference to the outcomes - The troops are on their own - Government has abandoned them. At least we won't have to listen to their lies and tired excuses any more.
Nobody comes out well of this... 11:32am on 13 Jul 2009 Late to this thread, and Nick's thread closed before I could register, but I wanted to make my comments even though the rest of you have moved on, because two things have stood out for me in the original affair of this blog.

The first is that I cannot believe the level of hypocrisy coming from Labour on this. Actually, that's a silly statement. Labour's hypocrisy knows no limits so nothing should surprise me, but given how low their previous lies and smears have taken them, I was beginning to think we might have reached bottom, but apparently not.

I can't help drawing comparisons between this scandal and Smeargate. Key differences are that this is a media scandal whereas Smeargate was a political scandal. David Cameron, the person that Labour somehow want to be held accountable has nothing to do with it. There are rumours that the scale of this is much larger than Smeargate, but to believe that you have to believe that the Police, CPS and the courts are complicit in some sort of cover-up. Even in Labour land where such institutions have been politicised and corrupted from their public duty, this is still hard to believe. Cameron has to be able to make a judgement based on the facts of the time. He has to be able to give somebody a second chance, particularly if their only acknowledged crime is lack of knowledge of wrong doing. If new facts arrive then he should be able to change his mind without stain. Until new facts arrive however, due process has to be given some weight.

The biggest difference in this affair to my mind is that Coulson, the man at the top, claimed to have no knowledge of awful things done on his watch. He accepted responsibility. He acknowledge how bad the things were and then he resigned his highly paid and influential job in recognition of his failure at the top. In contrast, Gordon Brown who was in charge at the time of Smeargate in his organisation, acknowledged how bad the crime was, accepted full responsibility for it and then did absolutely nothing about it. McBride was even allowed to resign instead of being sacked. Rumours are that he is still present in some way and patronage for his family within Labour persists with employment of his girlfriend in a "Communications" role. Hypocrisy, Spin; it's hard to work out which of Labour's numerous vices defines them best.

Secondly, the media have made much of the legal issues with respect to public interest. How is it that the Telegraph can break the law with impunity with respect to MPs' expenses and yet the News of the World can't invade the privacy of public figures when arguably the public is interested in both?

For me this debate is only valid if the law is right and just. On public information (metrics on governance, evidence of how public servants spend public money) the idea that Government owns it and that we can get access (sometimes) by asking nicely (FoI Requests) and that unauthorised leaks are a crime, is absurd. Information gathered by public servants at public expense on matters of public interest should be routinely published. The crime should be non-disclosure or false representation.

For people in the public eye, they have to be able to control what they make public and what they keep private through use of private email, phones etc. They probably have to have a duty of care on what they throw out, but nobody should have the right to tap their communications except in pursuit of legal proceedings in relation to suspected criminal activity. Where criminal activity is revealed through unauthorised breaches of privacy, this is where the grey issues are and where the debate should be. I tend to view each case on its merits. The one thing that I am adamant about is that criminals should not be able to escape criminal proceedings through evidence obtained illegally; both crimes should be prosecuted, the criminal acts and the illegal search.
So just what is a quango? 10:59am on 08 Jul 2009 I do wish the Speaker would pay parliament's respects to the fallen at the start of PMQs and stop this unsightly competition to out-sincere each other by the three main parties.

Labour's failure to provide the right equipment to meet the demands of their ill thought through political "objectives" just makes me sick at the hypocrisy of it all.

There was a colonel on the radio this morning being bullied by some wannabe reporter who was suggesting that the current offensive in Helmand province was a waste of time, effort and human life because the Taliban would just be allowed back in again afterwards. The Colonel made the point that the number of schools in the province had gone up from 33 to 80 in the last two years, that 88% of Afghans now receive health care compared to 13% in 2002. Why is it that our military leaders can articulate a political rationale for being there when our politicians and media clearly cannot? If only our politicians had a fraction of the competence, integrity, courage and wisdom our our armed forces.
So just what is a quango? 10:42am on 08 Jul 2009 Not your finest hour Andrew. We don't care about definitions. We are in an almighty recession and those who live off public money have so far failed spectacularly to realise that the money has run out.

Is the BBC Quasi Autonomous? It's supposedly run to benefit the public and not for profit so that has to be a 'yes'. Your best defence about it not being a QUANGO is that it's claim to be non-government is increasingly dubious. It's a moot point that it escapes meeting the definition by failing to serve its primary audience independently and without bias.

OK most people don't think of the BBC as a Quango, but more of a public institution. Surely the very reverence that terms suggests means that in these austere times it should be leading the way in cutting costs and maybe even reducing its fees to leave us with a little more in our pockets. I was shocked to hear that the head of the BBC is paid several times more than the Prime Minister. Is his job more difficult, more stressful? To find that there are seven other fat cats within the BBC in the same category just beggars belief.

Have a different category for public institutions that are wasting vast quantities of our money if you like, but let's not derail the debate about how we shine the spotlight on these wasters and make them accountable. I think it was a bit silly of the Tories to allow their story to be picked apart on a technicality, but your pedantry may have yet have done us a service. OK 800+ Quangos. How many other organisations like the BBC and BNFL are there that live off public funds and yet enjoy little or no transparency and little accountability either?

Let's line them all up before the bonfire and see just how much we can save.
Why bankers aren't worth it 10:58am on 03 Jul 2009 I know Labour can't spell it let alone live it but what we need is some social justice. Stories abound of civil action being taken by government against bankers in the US. Why not here, why not Goodwin et al? Some of the offenders are being re-employed in quangos by this government?!!

It won't hurt Labour in the year running up to the election if they allow the gambling to start again. If if provides some false green shoots of recovery then they might just get in again on the back of the same illusion that supported them the last two times (the first time was genuine hatred of the previous incumbent).

Even if they lose the next election, somebody is going to have to reign the banks in again and so this is just another example of scorched earth policy by this treacherous government. They don't care who gets hurt so long as they stay in power. If they get back in then the joke may then be on them, but I think they feel there is precious little chance and so this will be a gamble to limit the Tories to a minority government, blamed for the tough medicine required, with a Labour government returning in 3-5 years when the electorate can't take the pain any more and think that change will once again affect their fortunes.

Does nobody in Labour have any love at all for our country any more? I feel sick.

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Alistair Thomas