Pulling the Woolas over our eyes

Well, it appears as if Phil Woolas is on his way out of the door, and I for one am not upset. He is undoubtedly the architect of his own misfortune and really has nobody else to blame; he was ultimately responsible for publishing lies about his opponent and has thereby lost the right to represent the constituency of Oldham. I seriously doubt he will be missed in Westminster, he never struck me as particularly good at his job when he had one and given the alacrity with which Harriet kicked him out of the Labour Party I suspect this view is shared by the party hierarchy.

There does however seem to be a strand of opinion doing the rounds within the hallowed walls that even if it was right that he should go, the method of precipitating his departure was wrong; that judges should not have the power to interfere with the will of the people who elected him. This argument may have some merit were it not for the fact that his lies undoubtedly had influence over the result. If his majority had been huge it might not have mattered but seeing as more people voted for candidates other than Woolas and the winning margin was so small there was a pressing need to rerun the election without the lies and half truths.

Amongst the “great and good” at Westminster there are many who believe themselves to be beyond the laws that govern normal mortals and that in matters such as lying to the electorate or trousering expenses to which they have no right, they should only be answerable inwards to their fellow MPs. As we have seen with the expenses scandal there seems to be a marked reluctance to recognise the anger in the country about the behaviour of Parliamentarians and their seeming inability to come to terms with this anger. It is long past the time when we need to wrest back power from this self serving elite who are in the unique position of being able to write their own rules. They fully understand that with every erosion of their status, with each clawing back of power their ability to run Parliament as a cosy little club for their own benefit is diminished; their self awarded authority stripped away and they do not like this one little bit.

Parliament has no power other than that given to it by the people and it is for the people to determine the extent of that power, to vary it and reduce it as the people see fit and the mechanisms for doing so are the ballot box and the courts. As Cameron takes us towards fixed term Parliaments the need for the courts to have the ability to challenge Parliament and its members increases. When I hear MPs saying that the Courts do not have the right to look into their affairs the red mist descends, of course they have the right, without the courts who would protect the rights of the citizen against the state.

We have had the unedifying farce of Messrs Morley, Chaytor and Devine parading through the courts claiming that the laws as they apply to mortal man do not apply to Parliamentarians and they should not be subject to the normal court processes that apply to us if we have been accused of theft; thankfully this has now been adjudicated upon by the Supreme Court who have rightly decided that they are not above the law and I look forward to their trials with anticipation. I trust that if found guilty, incarceration will immediately follow.

Labour gets a spine.

Ever since Gordon Brown ascended to the top of the greasy pole, one thing seems to have characterised the Labour Party both before the General Election and afterwards, a seeming inability to come to a quick unambiguous decision. This was first evident when Bottler Brown vacillated over when to go to the country; a decision which arguably cost him his job. This failure on the part of Brown to take the big decision dogged his time as PM and seems to have continued under the omni-absent Ed Milliband who has managed to keep very quiet over Woolas, Livingstone’s support of the non-Labour candidate and the Labour Lords.

It is not my intention to intrude upon the private grief of the Labour Party at a time when the dishonesty of many of their Parliamentarians is making so many headlines so I will restrict myself to praising Harriet Harman for her decisive actions in declaring that liars have no place as candidates for Parliament and kicking Phil Woolas into the long grass. I do so hope that this will set some form of precedent not only within Labour but also other parties so that our future MPs are honest trustworthy folk not given to mendacity and self enrichment.

So once again Harriet, congratulations on injecting a bit of backbone and decisiveness into Labour.

Michael Gove, you are going too far.

This is certainly a strange day for democracy; we hear this morning that those who have been convicted of the most heinous of crimes are to be given the right to vote in elections for Parliament, on the grounds that it is their human right to be allowed the vote. These are the people who have taken away the human rights of others by murdering them or raping them or invading their homes or stealing their possessions, not a thought for the human rights of the victims of crime only the perpetrators.

Now we hear that Michael Gove is proposing to sack teachers who are members of the BNP; why for God’s sake? The BNP is a legally constituted political party the same as the Conservative or Labour parties and as such their members and supporters should have the same rights to express their political opinions as the next person. They are not members of a proscribed organisation and whilst that remains the status quo they should be entitled to the same rights as those who hold different political views. What next, will we be proposing a ban on teachers belonging to Labour or SNP or some other party that the government does not like, I do so hope not but fear that this is yet another erosion of personal freedoms.

Don’t get me wrong, I loathe the BNP and the policies they espouse with a passion, but by withdrawing from them the right to work in teaching or the police or the NHS or wherever all we will succeed in doing is to drive them underground. We need to expose them to the light of open unbiased public scrutiny where the fallacies behind their rhetoric can be demolished and their credibility such as it is destroyed.

Michael, you burst forth into the national consciousness earlier this year promising a massive reduction in central control of our schools with decision taking to be devolved to a local level and now hardly six months into your job you are proposing to dictate to schools who they may and may not hire. Please rethink this awful authoritarian throwback policy.

A teacher is supposed to be a professional, and as such there is no place for him or her to be expounding their personal beliefs in front of a class of children, that is wrong and to be deprecated irrespective of those beliefs and any teacher who is found to be attempting to politicise children should be disciplined but it is wrong to arbitrarily punish somebody for their beliefs if they are making no attempt to preach them.

Please Michael, no more blanket bans on groups of people instead allow local head teachers and boards of governors to deal on a case by case basis, that is part of the reason for having them in the first place.

Europe, get out of our lives.

Once again we are being subjected to a piece of European interference with our laws about which there is little if anything we seem able to do. They now wish society to extend the right to vote to those who have repudiated the norms of civil society by committing crimes against the laws of the land. They wish thieves and murderers and rapists and drug pushers to have the same rights as law abiding citizens when it comes to electing our representatives in Parliament and on Councils. This is a decision that flies in the face of common sense; after all they are locked up because they are a negative influence upon society at large.

We lock criminals up for the very good reason that they are not fit to live amongst the rest of us by virtue of their anti-social behaviour and as such they should forego the rights and privileges the rest of us enjoy whilst they are incarcerated.

This latest piece of Euro garbage follows hot on the heels of last weeks debacle at the European council when we were effectively told that whilst we here at home must endure cuts in services and higher taxation to help restore our economy, our unelected Euro Politburo need more money for new offices and higher wages and more staff and it seems there is precious little we can do about it under the present treaty arrangements.

I have no desire to live in a country where we must work until we are 66 or even 70 so the indolent French and Greeks can continue to retire at 62 or 60 or whatever, if they want that luxury then they should pay for it, not me or you.

The time has now come for our Parliament to say NO to these increasing demands upon our wallets and NO to these impositions on the way we rule ourselves. Don’t negotiate with them, don’t argue with them, just say no and keep the cheque book in the pocket. Europe needs the UK far more than the UK needs Europe.

Just tell Barroso and Van Rompuy and the others to go and take a running jump!