Charon’s Advent calendar: Day Five
Sunday, December 5, 2010 by Charon QC
It is not that long ago when a fresh faced youthful man who, hitherto, had been largely ignored and mocked by prime minister and leader of the opposition alike, stood behind a lectern on television between two giants of the political stage and told us…“You want to know the great political story of our generation? It isn’t new Labour. It isn’t New Conservatives. Those are just the dying sparks of a fire that’s running out of fuel.”
Well… Clegg didn’t actually say that in the leadership debates… he said it a couple of years before. Now, even Sepp Blatter is more popular than Kim Il Clegg. I suspect the great political story of our generation is that, soon, Lib-Dem MPs will be able to go to work in a Smart car….. all of them……. in just one Smart car.
Nick Clegg’s unexpectedly swift journey from idol to hate figure
Rawnsley, in The Observer, does the analysis….
And…just when you thought it was safe to consider the possibility that politicians may be acting in the ‘national interest’…The Mail on Sunday would like to disabuse you of this idea…
Ed Miliband’s statement that the fees rise is an ‘Act of vandalism’... prompted me on
twitter last night to suggest that the election of Ed Miliband as leader may be
the act of vandalism. For my part, I cannot really summon the enthusiasm to either listen to or read anything he has to say. After 30 years of voting Labour I no longer subscribe to any form of tribal politics, preferring instead to look at the ‘real politik’ of options open to us in the context of the times we live in. Miliband Minor is not going down that well. Clegg is going down very badly. Vince Cable is spinning so fast with mind changes that he may have a future after politics working for
Shell again, but this time as a drill. This leaves us with Cameron who admits that he is more of a
Chairman than a CEO; presiding over a party where the more extreme element are sitting on the backbenches wearing togas, sharpening their knives on the stones of vested self interest and asking each other when they will be able to kill foxes again. Apparently the 1922 Committee chairman is asking them not to rock the boat, otherwise the next two years will be about killing foxes and not the recession.
At least there is some good news… The Mail on Sunday reports…
“Boris Johnson has taken revenge on Sepp Blatter and the other FIFA delegates who destroyed England’s bid to host the World Cup by kicking them out of London’s Dorchester hotel for the 2012 Olympic Games.”
It has taken a while, but the mainstream tabloids, now that X-Factory and I’m a Tosser Get Me Out of Here are coming to an end, have finally worked out that our investment in the BANKS could be a good thing and we might actually make a profit out of selling the bank shares over the next two years. City experts believe that we will make a profit.
And some even more surreal political news….
MP’s Commons aide is accused of being a Russian spy: Woman, 25, fighting deportation on suspicion of espionage
The Mail reports…“An MP today denied his Russian assistant was a spy after security services arrested her on suspicion of espionage.
Home Secretary Theresa May had approved the removal of Katia Zatuliveter after being briefed by MI5 about her alleged activities, according to the Sunday Times.
Ms Zatuliveter, was working for Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, who confirmed that she had been taken into detention and was fighting deportation from the UK.
I can’t believe all the hypocrisy shown over the FIFA decision. There now seems to be unanimous agreement that Panorama got it right.
And the Daily Mail has reported that Boris has withdrawn an offer of a week’s accommodation at the Dorchester for the 2012 Olympics to Sepp Blatter et al.
“The gesture was part of the charm offensive designed to woo FIFA”
That’s a new irregular verb to me.
London mayors give charm offensives.
Greasy foreigners give bribes.
Why not allow the winning World Cup country to host the competition eight years later? It wouldn’t have helped England, but we’d have been spared the media chanting “We wuz robbed”.
Conor…. Indeed… a charm offensive is…however….. not defined in the Bribery Act… as far as I can see from the definitions section!
Cricket, football …..has been (may still be) riddled with corruption… and not just foreign teams… I am advised by those who know a thing or two about cricket…..
@Conor
I don’t care too much for football or the amount of toadying required to win these votes. However, equating secret payments with public hospitality which is on the public record is ridiculous. In fact I’d go further – it’s a cynical and misleading comparison.
As for the winning side staging the tournament, fair enough I suppose, but it would mean that only South America or Europe would stage the World Cup.
Steve…. quite! But still schmoozing… and schmoozing makes the world go round.. which is why MoJ reluctant to over specify what bribery Act actually means…, I suspect!
Most companies (like mine) have hospitality rules, but I do wonder just how far up the management line they are applied. Of course there are tax implications which are, perhaps, a little lax. Witness the number of hospitality suites at major sporting venues.
I’m not wholly innocent – I did once get to go to the practice day at the British Grand Prix courtesy of a sponsor of the Renault GP team (an outfit not, itself, unknown to dubious practices). Sadly I’m not important enough to have too many temptations come my way, and even in this case I suspect I was a substitute.
Steve – some years ago I was offered a substantial ‘inducement’ by the extremely wealthy father of a student to ensure that his son passed the exams.
I told him that the tuition fees covered tuition – the examinations were down to how well his son understood the tuition. The father looked horrified and said, quickly, that he was proposing an additional payment. He did not appear to understand that I was declining his bribe and was mortified that I should think he was including passing the exams in the original fees!
He actually produced a cheque book. I asked him to put it away.
Strange old world…..
Shades of Porterhouse Blue and it’s Skullion’s Scholars.
It does make you wonder some time just how many people are used to buying their way through life.
Greetings from the ghost of blogging past. Re Clegg – you may or may not like this video, it depends how base your sense of humour is. NSFW. In fact, very NSFW.
Bonjour Usefully Employed! Well…. it amused me…. but as you say NSFW! How are you?
presumably now working on radio 4’s ‘today’.