Blairs Legacy, page 3

Originally posted by budski
reply to post by Ste2652

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Fair point, but this labour government has had as bad a record in sleaze as the last lot of tories had.

At least.

- You'll be able to point to more than 2 Labour Ministers breaking the law so seriously that they ended up doing time in prison then?

No?

Not even 1?

Not quite the "at least" you want to claim then, is it?

Don't be so silly budski.

The facts are that this Labour Gov has significantly tightened the rules on political financing & the required public disclosure of it that mere disclosure misdemeanors (usually relating to the timing of a disclosure, not a total failure per se) are now described a "sleeze".

Note too that even in the event of a dodge coming to light (the recent loans controversy is a prime example) that this Gov has responded to the public mood and brought even those previously technically permissible (and completely legal) manoeuvres within the reach of the law.

It's plain that the tory party, their media pals & their supporters (desperately) wish the public would draw a (ludicrous) equivalence to what we saw in the last tory Gov - where 2 senior Ministers ended up being jailed and served time in prison for perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Jonathan Aitken link

Jeffrey Archer link

Dream on, the people might not like to see politicians 'caught out' under the new rules but to pretend that things are just as they were - or worse - is frankly laughable and a deliberate denial of the reality of the current situation (& the new laws).

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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Good lord sminkeypinkey, you've reached new levels of pro-labour posting

The whole cabinet were interviewed by the police, including a sitting Prime Minister, into the alleged funding fraud. Really? How can you brush that under the carpet? Yeah, no one was charged, but it was still a huge event.

Peter Hain is still be investigated by the Met, so he can end up being charged.

Let's not be blind and bias

reply to post by budski

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All parties have their share of sleaze. Labour is no better or worse than the Tories, and to think that they are is deliberate bias I think.

In the last couple of years alone we've seen Derek Conway (giving our money to his kids for doing nothing), Boris Johnson (having an affair), Andy Coulson (resigned from the News of the World over the tapping of telephones belonging to the Royal Family... now Conservative Party communications director) and so on. On the Labour side we've had John Prescott (having an affair), the cash for honours scandal and Peter Hain (with the deputy leadership campaign donations).

I could list a lot more on both sides, but I'm not going to waste my time. The point is that both the two main parties (and almost certainly the Lib Dems, too) are involved in rather dubious activities.

Originally posted by infinite
Good lord sminkeypinkey, you've reached new levels of pro-labour posting

- Well someone's got to do it!

Naaa inf, I'm merely pointing out that claims of an equivalence between the proven (in a Court of law) criminal behaviour seen under the last tory Gov and the mere over-done claims & exaggerated petty misdemeanours made about this one are overblown nonsense.

2 tory Ministers jailed is not a record Labour has repeated nevermind exceeded.

I also notice that the recent resolution of the 'David Abrahams affair without any Police action, not a single charge and least of all not a single person being sent for trial and facing conviction.
Oddly this has passed by completely ignored by almost the entire the UK press.

Naturally this is in stark contrast to all the numerous lurid OTT claims initially made (and sustained for weeks) when they, our tory press, imagined they had something concrete to lambast this Gov over.

Like-wise I'd give odds on a similar outcome to that supposed instance of 'sleaze' in relation to Peter Hain.
......an instance that might turn out to have been a technical infringement of the new rules (brought in by this Gov) regarding campaign funding but hardly an example of 'sleaze' to the personal benefit of Peter Hain or anyone connected to Peter Hain.

That's the thing about the current level of 'dodgy' politics in the UK.
By world standards it isn't 'corrupt' by any sane definition at all.

We all know politics is (usually) a dirty business but if all we have to worry about are effectively supporters getting a silly gong of some sort
(which many of us these days have little regard for anyways)
merely because they supported a particular political party
(which, as that supposed 'cash for honours' scandal clearly showed is, in almost all instances, perfectly & totally legal anyway)
then the truth is that we haven't really got a lot to worry about.

As for trying to pretend that Blair's record will be one of sleaze?

That's absurd given that it was Blair's Gov(s) - in the teeth of tory opposition - that introduced the new disclosure rules and funding limits and independent regulatory bodies to oversee the implementation of those rules.
In fact one might well say that the fact that as Labour themselves have been reported for various breaches of those new regs it proves the integrity of those new arrangements.

(and the fact that Labour have not been found guilty of any serious breach of the regs shows that claims of them being just as sleazy as the previous lot to be the obvious politically motivated guff it so plainly is)

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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I'm glad you qualified that with "in a court of law" sminkey - pity mandy never saw one for making a fraudulent mortgage application...

Will blair ever see one for allowing rendition flights?

Or the new accusation that british subjects were handed over to ISI in pakistan for "interrogation" (torture) before being passed back to MI5?

I don't buy the excuse that he didn't know about them - he may be a money grubber, but he's no half-wit.

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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The false mortgage application is a matter of record - you or I would have been taken to court, or at the very least interviewed by police.

Nice duck on the rendition flights and torture accusations :p

Originally posted by budski
The false mortgage application is a matter of record - you or I would have been taken to court, or at the very least interviewed by police.

- No the allegation of a false mortgage application is a matter of public record.

......and besides what has that got to do with the Gov?

The matter was investigated by the Britannia Building Soc and they decided (as was their right as a private financial organisation) not to do anything involving the law or Police.

Link

Originally posted by budski
Nice duck on the rendition flights and torture accusations

- No, I didn't duck anything, as you say they are mere allegations.

I'm always amused at the approach of the right-wing critics.

They invariably claim to be 'conservative', traditionalists and respecters of our British law and British legal traditions
(and that Labour are a very very scary threat to all of this)
and yet when it comes to their attempts to bash this Labour Gov they will trash any old inconvenient convention, disregard any of our historic and hard-won rights and clutch at any straw to sling mud no matter how tenuous their claims.

Like I said, mere claims, accusations and inuendo dressed up as the equivelent of fact tested before a jury and a Judge in a court of law.

We already know from people like ex-tory leader Michael Howard that not only would the tory party have backed the US & attacked Iraq (without even the 1st UN resolution nevermind Blair's attempt at a 2nd) but you have got to be living in a dreamworld if you seriously imagine that they would have risked a catastrophic rift with the USA by refusing them various cooperation(s).

Of course this ridiculous anti-Americanism the tory party and their support has recently (since the Iraq war mk2) flirted with is utterly cynical.

As we saw with Mrs Thatch the tory party are rarely anything but the most supine of partners when it comes to the US (a quiet word was about as much as they could bring themselves to manage when the US trumped up a load of nonsense & attacked British dependency Grenada.

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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yes the building society (ahem) decided not to involve the police - with no outside pressure applied at all.

mmmm 'K

Rendition flights are also a matter of record, and it's up to the government to prove the allegations of complicity in torture are without foundation.

Frankly sminkey, I'm getting a little tired of you trying to smear anyone who questions your beloved as some kind of right wing nut job, and also of the deraiment tactics you use when trying to defend "new" labour - this isn't about what the tory's did, this is about what blair has done and what brown continues to do, and nor is it about my politics.

I've had the conversation with you before about my politics, and they are not tory, or lib dem, or labour.

I've also said to you that if the tories were still in power, then I'd be bashing them for their sleaze, mistakes, corruption, whatever.

How about trying to address the issues that are being raised instead of trying to spin your way out of it in the finest tradition of blairite hypocrisy?

well, test for Brown

Election thread

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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I'm really surprised that boris won - KL must have been a truly bad mayor for him to lose to boris.

That said, why do you think boris is a buffoon?

He's apparently a very intelligent bloke, and he did run a good campaign.

Is it just that you hate all tories and everything tory?

If so, how can you like blair? He's more tory than the tories

Sminkey, tell the truth - are you polly toynbee?




So that people can judge for themselves what the last budget did, here's a budget calculator

Try putting yourself in the place of a low earners, with kids, a mortgage and a car - it's interesting to see some of the results.

[edit on 3/5/2008 by budski]

Originally posted by budski
why do you think boris is a buffoon?

- One hardly needs to look too far into Boris' history to see the kind of guy he is.

Originally posted by budski So that people can judge for themselves what the last budget did, here's a budget calculator

Try putting yourself in the place of a low earners, with kids, a mortgage and a car - it's interesting to see some of the results.

- Yeah
but
for that to work out to match the scare stories you have to be single, you have to make sure that your car is a high polluter/gas-guzzler, that your house is an a-typical band D, E and on up house and that you smoke 20 a day or more and that you drink practically daily.

Actually to lose out you also need to have no children
(so as to miss out on the incresed child benefit, the child tax credit and the increased working tax credit......which even the calculator - note it's dated march 2008 - small print admits is difficult to work out, particularly as all the uprated amounts were not given in detail at the time of the budget).

Not IMO the most likely combination.

.....and even if it were surely aiming help out those working families most is exactly the kind of policy many have been calling for?

reply to post by sminkeypinkey

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yep - that's what's interesting.

Unless of course you can't work out how to claim tax credits, and then assuming that they calculate the amount properly, both of which are hardly unknown scenario's.

Speaking of personality's, old ken has hardly been a paragon of virtue.

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