Star’s front row seat for sporting history
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So, farewell then, Julie
Friday 29th May 2009, 8:45AM BST.
Even in these exceptional political days, it was surreal, writes Shirley Tart.
One minute Tory MP Julie Kirkbride was on TV explaining, in a way usually reserved for the not very bright, the legitimacy of sending us the bills for a new bedroom, glamour pictures of herself and the second home she claimed for while her MP husband was claiming for the other one.
The next minute, she’d gone.
Well, her reasoning had grown more and more fanciful. So as she was explaining why we should pay for the pics of a pink frock in a haystack, child care arrangements with her brother, the sister who’s her secretary but lives in Dorset, a public meeting she refused to attend on a Sunday and her irritation at not pressing hubby Andrew McKay (also now packed up and on his way) about their joint mortgage expenses, the good folk of Bromsgrove were signing a petition bluntly telling their MP to hop it. Political watchers had never seen anything like it.
Five minutes later, the lady had accepted the inevitable. Though why it took so long is a mystery and why Call Me Dave was still in Julie Kirkbride’s corner, a greater one.
Simultaneously, Labour’s Margaret Moran was clearing her desk in Luton South largely on account of spending our dosh on dry rot repairs at a house in Southampton, 100 miles from her constituency and farther from Parliament.
As I recall she originally threatened to sue over the allegations, suggesting that because her partner lived there, it was reasonable as her second home or she wouldn’t have a family life at all. What’s wrong with Luton?
So Margaret’s off – not because she’s done anything wrong, of course, but due to the strain on her family and her own delicate health. Naturally.
Will Esther really step up to the mark? We’ll see. Though come the next election, we’ll be hard pushed to find anybody to stand anywhere.
And if that’s not glum enough, the Queen – the only living head of state who served in uniform during World War II – has been left out and cheerless, hopeless Gordon will represent us at next week’s D-Day commemorations in France.
Sums it all up really, doesn’t it.
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Good Ridence
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An excellent article from Miss Tart – but why did she then have to ruin it with that bit of nonsense at the end about the Queen-to-be fighting her way up the beach on D-Day? “Served in uniform”? Oh really?
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“Though come the next election, we’ll be hard pushed to find anybody to stand anywhere”
This about sums it up. For £65k a year you are going to get low rate middle managers who have nothing to offer the country than just being good at putting leaflets through doors. Any one worth their salt will be earning much more than this in real life with out all the hassel of the public mob to deal with.
We get the politics we deserve, OAPs run the council they mean well but are too nice and do not have the fire in the blood, sad but true. The MPs we get are so boaring you can not tell which party they are from and what if anything they stand for.
Who is to blame for this, all of us who can not be bothered to vote or get involved in a time when we expect every thing and do nothing.
Julie Kirkbride was a good MP but also a fool but better the occasional fool than the village idiots we vote in time after time.
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Rob, Telford said: May 29th, 2009 at 10:05
An excellent article from Miss Tart – but why did she then have to ruin it with that bit of nonsense at the end about the Queen-to-be fighting her way up the beach on D-Day? “Served in uniform”? Oh really?
Exactly Rob, which is why it isn’t really an excellent article at all – Talk about obsessed with her Royal connections!
Sums it all up really doesn’t it?
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Serotonin – the article was a bit of curate’s egg – good in parts. I have commented elsewhere on here recently about our Shirl’s apparent inability to compile a shopping list without mentioning a member of the royal family….
I can just see it: “cornflakes (that reminds me, the Queen keeps hers in tupperware boxes) – dog food (same brand as she feeds her corgis) – gin (same brand as favoured by the late Queen Mother, who I was privileged to meet on several occasions)……”
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R Jaggs said:
“Though come the next election, we’ll be hard pushed to find anybody to stand anywhere”
I wouldn’t bet on it – how many seats do you think won’t be hard-fought?
“For £65k a year you are going to get low rate middle managers who have nothing to offer the country than just being good at putting leaflets through doors. Any one worth their salt will be earning much more than this in real life”
£65k a year already puts them in the top 3% of UK earners – and the recent scandal in the financial institution would suggest high pay doesn’t necessarily guarantee high levels of performance.
“The MPs we get are so boaring” – what do you expect from a bunch of greedy swine….?
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I rest my case any one who thinks £65 k is a lot of money is not the person I want looking after the UK. I want to see those from the top of the pile not just the top 3% in charge then we might get some real minds instead of career politicians. Pay peanuts get monkeys.
By the way Rob I was quoting the blog when saying “Though come the next election, we’ll be hard pushed to find anybody to stand anywhere” I should of added “worth having”.
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Julie Kirkbride was rightly toppled after fighting a painful rearguard action. She should have gone with her husband and it just goes to show the degree of brazeness about her. She was fighting to the last. Having said that, the organisers of the “Julie must go” campaign are a bit questionable in their tactics. They were members of “Respect”, that disreputable bunch that sided with Iraq and are led by George Galloway.
4 Miles down the dual carriageway from Bromsgrove and Julie Kirkbride is the Constituency of Redditch with out Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, this is the woman who’s sisters bedroom is her 1st home whilst her husband and kids live in her 2nd home in Redditch, a large luxurious house with a large patio for the taxpayer funded heaters, it even has a CD player for the occasional “blue film” paid for by the taxpayer. This woman at present seems inviolate – still in office, if there is any fairness, justice, call it what you will, Jacqui Smith must go NOW. If “Respect” wish to be credible, jump in your cars and 10 minutes away is Jacqui Smith’s town of Redditch, start another campaign there.
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Stuart
It seems that time after time you question peoples right to voice their opinion simply because their political views are not in keeping with your own. Now it appears that although you agree that Ms Kirkbride ‘was rightly toppled’, you feel the need criticise the opposition group not because of the facts but because it has not been organised by your own political party?
All in all it sounds like you’re really not happy that this Tory engineered smear, which was leaked through a Tory paper has now blown up in your smug Tory faces!
I don’t really understand much else of what you’ve written, perhaps you’d like to write it in English next time? As for playing blue films on a CD player?
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Well, well, well, Serotonin just about takes the biscuit. Pray tell me in English that we all understand, just exactly is the “opinion” that I have differed with here. I can’t see one neither could anyone else, what I have asked for and expected is some balance between the activists “rightly” unseating Julie Kirbride in Bromsgrove and keeping silent when a few miles down the road is the constituency of Jacquie Smith whos’e questionable claims gave rise to this whole sorry saga.
My position is simple, if they have claimed questionable expenses, they all must go, Labour, Lib Dem, Tory, Welsh Nats, Scots, Nats, the whole lot and yes, right in the forefront must be Jacqui Smith, our esteemed Home Secretary. This disgrace is not a party issue which plainly it is to you but an issue of morality, ethics, trust, honesty etc etc. All those matters which Labour would have us believe they hold the moral high ground on.
If you wish to make it a party issue, yes – just say the word again and you will see comments that you certainly will not like. Before you do though, remember these expenses etc affect ALL PARTIES.
One thing is quite plain, and if I were you I would be quite ashamed to admit it. You defend an MP (and Home Secretary at that) who designates a room in her sisters house in London as her “main” home whilst her husband and kids remain in her “second” home in Redditch. Not only having insulted us all with that blatant interpretation of her housing, she has purchased very many, very expensive items (and cheaper ones like renting blue films) for her second home in Redditch. Now, whichever party this woman belongs to, would you have forgiven her if she were a Tory. Would you, on deeper reflection still support her.
Serotonin, true to form, you are going over the top with wholly unsubstantiated nonsense and again, plainly you are hurt that someone should differ with your opinions and views, and, seemingly more hurt, angry and demoralised that the whole Labour edifice seems to crashing down around your ears. What was it Tories, 42%, Lib Dems, 17%, Lib Dems 14% and Labour 0.01%.
Don’t worry Serotonin, their stock with the electorate will soon improve if they rely on comments like that at 9. There was no rancour at all in this stream until you had to introduce it. JACQUI SMITH MUST GO, the same as the rest from every party.
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Mistake, first Lib Dems should read UKIP.
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Stuart
I really couldnt be bothered to try and read that little rant are you sure that its me going over the top?
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Stuart, that was quite a mistake.
In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph opinion poll, voters were asked who they would support this week on Thursday June 4th in the elections to the European parliament. These were the exact results:
Conservatives: 29%
Lib Dems: 20%
Labour: 17%
Greens: 11%
UKIP: 10%
BNP: 5%
Polls are, of course, unreliable, but I would like to think that the surge of interest for the Greens is because a sizeable chunk of voters believe that JOB-CREATION is the key issue and that the Green New Deal to kickstart a green industrial revolution in our economy is the way out of this crisis.
I also hope that those who are appalled by people like Julie McBride might be impressed with a report last week produced by the independent think tank, Open Europe.
Open Europe did a survey looking at how MEPs voted on issues related to transparency and reform in Brussels, and fighting waste and misuse of funds.
Top of their poll was Caroline Lucas MEP, the Green Party leader.
Bottom of their poll were 5 UKIP members, 4 Conservatives and Robert Kilroy-Silk, originally of UKIP.
I know this is only a poll, but accurate numbers help improve the quality of the debate.
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Stuart,
I’m absolutely sure that the person from the ridiculous ‘Respect’ party had political motives in starting the ‘Julie must go’ campaign, and I’m equally sure that the Daily Telegraph had similar impure motives.
Nevertheless, in both cases, the campaigns have attracted significant broad-based public support – hardly surprising in the circumstances. But I wonder what benefit we will find once this feeding frenzy is over?
Clearly all the major parties will be damaged, and the rag-bag of one-issue independent parties will most likely gain, but it’s one of those cases where we must be careful what we wish for.
Amongst the smaller parties are some who are xenophobic, some who are downright racist, at least one that is allegedly funded by money from the US military and numerous others who are clearly quite incapable of participating in government whether local, national or European, in any sort of positive way.
Despite all the avarice and stupidity of the current crop of MPs I really don’t think it will do any of us any good in the medium to long-term to find that we have a bunch of ill-prepared disruptive malcontents infesting both local councils and the European Parliament.
If we take a closer look at some of the parties who hope to gain from the current situation, we have the BNP with their holocaust-denying leader, who are beneath contempt, UKIP, who have had not one, but two MEPs investigated for fraud, one of which was jailed for it, the other of which is currently facing money-laundering charges, Libertas, whose funding is causing many questions to be asked as to why Americans might be so keen to fund an anti-European party, the pie in the sky Greens, the looney left parties, such as the Socialist Labour Party, and the extremely strangely named Jury Team – who knows what they stand for!
Do any of these really look like the good guys riding to our rescue?
There’s a very entertaing TV programme, which came from Radio 4, called Genius, in which members of the public can suggest eccentric bright ideas. One, suggested a few weeks ago, was the Democrabus, essentially a bus where the passengers got to vote on the bus’s destination. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Trouble was, when they tried this with the audience acting as the passengers, no-one could agree, and the result was that the ‘bus’ went nowhere.
Sadly, that could be where our votes could be taking us…
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Huw, I just make this point, did you really think I was serious when I said that Labour only had 0.01% of the poll. I was plucking wild figures out of the air and I know of no serious poll that shows figures like I used in 10. Each one I used, wholly fictitious, was to make a painful point to our erstwhile defender of the Right Honourable Jacqui Smith, MP.
But you make a good electioneering point Huw, get rid of Caroline Lucas and I think the Green’s would be better loved than they are. She comes across as a very strident, domineering woman, half dolly bird and half Margaret Thatcher, a very toxic mix that put’s me off. You have to Thursday to find a new leader if you wish to do well.
Glad to see though that Serotonin presumably accepts that naughty expense claimants exist in every party without exception and it even includes Cabinet Ministers and their opposition Shadows. W.E.F 2.0pm today though, Jacqui Smith is the highest yet to fall on her sword albeit we are told it is to give more time to her husband, kids and to watch more of those interesting films.
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Stuart, as the arbiter of the public mood, I think you need to have some strong words with those who yesterday voted Caroline Lucas the Observer’s Ethical Politician of the Year for the second time running.
She beat Vince Cable and David Cameron into 2nd and 3rd place.
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Peter, you called us ‘the pie in the sky Greens’.
This is unsurprising coming from someone like you who denies the overwhelming scientific evidence about anthropogenic climate change.
However, it would be great if you could say exactly WHY the Greens’ plans to create a million jobs in home insulation, energy conservation, green manufacturing, renewable energy etc are ‘pie in the sky’.
The governments of the USA, Japan and South Korea, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations have all indicated that GREEN JOBS are the way to get ourselves out of the recession.
The trades unions, too, think a radical new green manufacturing strategy is the best way of beating the recession( http://www.shropshirestar.com/2009/04/07/budget-must-focus-on-jobs-and-green-industries-says-tuc/ ).
Why do you think the job-creating strategy of countries like South Korea and Japan, politicans like Barack Obama and Ban-Ki Moon, and the representatives of organised labour in the UK is pie in the sky, Peter?
If we can find the billions for two wars and for Trident, we can find the money for the Green New Deal to get Britain working again.
The NHS was launched in 1948 in a nation which was bankrupted by war, probably in the face of your kind of ‘pie in the sky’ opposition.
60 years on it is as popular as ever, despite the efforts of some newspaper proprietors.
There are determined people in this country, who have a vision for re-directing our economy and creating jobs for a sustainable economy, which takes on the challenges of peak oil and climate change head on.
Could you substantiate why exactly you think we are wrong to be pushing in this direction.
What would be your solution to getting Britain working again, if you were driving the Democrabus?
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