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The curious case of Dr Fox the Defence Minister..
Posted by BernkastelCues on 14 October 2011 - 2:56pm.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find Liams "explanation" about his strange relationship with Mr Wherrity - that he has no official connection with him, but his travel and expenses are paid for by some anonymous benefactors who "share their political outlook" - far more disturbing than any of the other insinuated alternatives?
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Is it just me ....
... or are there others who cannot hear repeated references to Fox's 'friend' in the news without repeating, 'Fwend!' in an Inbetweeners voice?
Oh, and yes, I agree with you.
Innuendo and gossip aside
Firstly you don't end up in a position such as Fox is in now and then bring your friends to work just to hang around. So the alternative is that Wherrity is there for (im)proper reasons - that is political and financial.
And if you accept that, then you are faced with no alternative that Fox knows exactly what is going on. The fact that none of it is transparent can only lead to the fact that this is dodgy business going on.
Additionally you cannot keep that kind of thing quiet, so other people must have known what was going on. And if they didn't what does that say about our government, that the secretary of state for defence can run around doing god knows what without anybody asking questions.
Innuendo & gossip is their only plausible excuse
if it turned out that they burned with an insatiable lust for each other I'd be inclined to say "well, in future you know just get a room somewher, ok ? And sheesh - out of office hours, ok guys ?."
Then I'd forget all about it.
When this all started...
...my first reaction was 'oh they must be gay lovers'. Then I dismissed that as me being my gossipy mind. Then that's what the BBC mentioned, or rather the denial was mentioned on the BBC. Then it was off. Is it back on?
I have worked with people who do this and have close friends who do this... it's probably just crony-ism/jobs for mates/surround yourself with people you can trust/good ol' boy type stuff, isn't it?
Presumably though, there's a thin line between
building a team of trusted advisers who one has known for many years and crony-ism.
I had an inadvertent look at The Times today
It led on the Werrity story ... From memory, the report was all about Werrity's not-for-profit organisation, his jetset lifestyle (funded by the company credit card, as it were) and the principal funders of the organisation being a pro-Israeli Finn, an English venture capitalist, and a US geopolitical consultancy which could never be described as staffed by "bleeding heart liberals". The report then segued into Fox's involvement with another charity set up to promote UK-US relations which shut down a couple of years back after the charity watchdog said, "You're not doing anything charitable."
The upshot of all this is people jetting round the planet, lobbying, influencing, fixing, making deals, spunking loads of money on first class air travel and lunch in Dubai - all while they have not-for-profit or charitable status, never mind the political motivations.
I shall choose my words carefully m'lud but it strikes me that Werrity was "funded" by certain sectional interests and had direct access to the bloke who is in charge of our defence. Had these funders been the internet department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, or Russian SVR then Fox would be long gone and Werrity would be currently detained at the pleasure of Her Maj. As it stands, Fox's behaviour seems "highly questionable", while Werrity seems to be a "person for hire". There are other ways of putting that, but I'm not going to use the terminology here.
The frequent use of the oddly anomalous term "friend" in the media coverage meanwhile is neither here nor there since even if Liam and Adam are "friends" i couldn't really give the flying proverbial. That's a matter for them and for Mrs F.
And
If Fox ran a fake charity - Atlantic Bridge, a political organisation, not an actual charity, say the experts - and benefited his pal Werrity by parachuting him in as exec director, then both men should have the book thrown at them...
Is this the same charity
That Cameron's spokeswoman is also an exec-director of ?
well...
Kate Fall (described by the Mail as "Cameron's gatekeeper") worked for an organisation called Atlantic Partnership, set up by Michael Howard in 2001
but Gabby Bertin (Cameron's communications chief) did actually work for Atlantic Bridge
STOP PRESS: Radio 4 just announced that Fox has resigned
Atlantic Bridge
is still an active organization. It's British registered charity arm was hastily dissolved to preempt an investigation by the Charities Commission, who suspected it's aims were not charitable but wholly political. The American end carries on however, with strong backing from Republican Tea Party types. Other prominent UK right-wingers besides Dr. Fox have ties to the organization.
Fox is out, for now, but he'll no doubt be right back in the thick of things before long. Just like it all never happened. That's the way these things seem to go nowadays with our scummy breed of politicians.
succinctly put Mr Glenbervie
If I can take this forum to pose a question to you, Picto a Picto?
For being one of us, and a working class boy from East Kilbride to boot, Don't you find Mr Fox and his neo con/lib sympathies all a bit strange and, dare one say, creepy?
He's a year younger than me (50 I think) and from roughly the same geographical area. Growing up in the 80's, my political sensibilities have tended to be shaped by events we all observed then.
Give or take a pro/con nationalist view, the overwhelming consensus amongst people I know is similarly left of field. How you can go through the same and arrive at a totally opposite conclusion I find perverse. Ditto with Michale Gove. Something else has got to be the cause.
Meethinks their rabidly Unionist, Thatcherite fanboy worship speaks of other deep trauma and unhappiness. Loner boys who decided to show the cool kids and everyone else they don't care about being unpopular by taking the most extreme and shocking option open to them
Its the Scottish Labour version of a tattoo on your forehead.
Next week on cod analysis: why thinking about my willie and mummy makes me faint.
is this where i confess that...
... i went to the same school as Michael Gove? But since I'm five years older than him, our paths didn't cross, although technically we may have shared a playground/classrooms in 1979/80 ...
actually looking at both Fox and Gove, they are anomalous cases ... contrarian even ... Gove's dad was "in the fish" (as it's said in Aberdeen) while his mum worked as a lab assistant and in a deaf school ... provincial, petit bourgeois upbringing ... Fox was brought up in a cooncil hoose in East Kilbride ...
mind you, where i was impressed in my Edinburgh-studenty late teens by things like Hampden under floodlights on international nights, or going to gigs in Edinburgh, Fox & Gove (at Glasgow and Oxford respectively) seem to have fallen under the glamour spell of the Tories in their all-conquering 1980s Thatcherite pomp ...
[to be fair, watching the Labour Party in operation in Glasgow in the 1980s would have tended to drive people towards either the Conservatives (and the bright lights of London) or to unpaid coffee-picking in Nicaragua like 'proper socialists' ...]
veering towards a conclusion, i'll confess to understanding the attraction, if not sharing it ... Scottish politics looked stodgy and small-c conservative back then because they were ... (although the small-c conservatives were the Labour Party) ... it took years for something interesting to happen, politically, in Scotland: the parliament in '99 then the SNP government in '11 ... alternatively, if you were a newly qualified doctor with political ambitions in the 1980s, or an Oxford student down from sweet, wee Aberdeen, then the success, power, agency and radicalism of the Conservatives under Thatcher would have been quite beguiling
Pish
As I shall now demonstrate. Scottish politics, you say, were 'stodgy' and nothing interesting happened until the Parliament in '99. Do you really think that the Parliament magically arose fully formed one morning? Have you forgotten the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the process by which that Parliament was put together, clause by clause? A process that involved all walks of Scottish life and took decisions on the basis of unanimity?
The SCC looked like a different way of doing things; the means were as important - inseparable from - the ends. It suits our current masters to airbrush it from the picture, of course, as they were busy throwing their toys out of their pram at the time.
The 80s were indeed a time of ideas as a glance through back copies of the late lamented Radical Scotland attests. This was true inside the Labour Party and outside. It was the time of the Labour Coordinating Committee and Scottish Labour Action. There was an enormous amount going on.
Shame you missed it - but at least you didn't join the Tories.
Pith
I am perfectly well aware of the constitutional convention but i have a tendency to write far too much in this blog so i was trying to rein myself in ... I was also a buyer of Radical Scotland which was fun but, ultimately we still have CoS ministers and we still have the Sunday Post, so the magazine's revolutionary strangling aims remain yet unfulfilled ...
... and when i say "nothing interesting happened in Scotland" i'll stand by that since from 1979 (to pick a date at non-random) to 1997 (ditto) there was a waning Tory vote, a Labour orthodoxy and the country's centre of gravity was Glasgow (geographically) and Labour (politically) ... This set certain trains of thought a-chugging in my mind because since the '87 election i've tended to think that Labour was part of the problem in Scotland, not part of the solution
the tectonic plates only really started to shift because Labour knew that not delivering on devolution after '97 would be a disaster so we got Holyrood (but heavens forfend not a parliament in the old Royal High lest it be seen as separatist) and PR (which made it very hard to develop the kind of working this-is-not-a-majority that passes for 'strong government' in Westminster) ... and then? We (as a tiny, wee country on the fringes of NW Europe) got so pissed off with New Labour and the useless bag of no-marks that passes as the Scottish Labour leadership that Blair's legacy, Brown and even the promise of Miliband did not prevent the voters saying, "Ach, give Salmond a go." Which is also interesting.
I'll give you that I didn't participate in Labour politics in Scotland after the '87 election (when i went a-leafletting and generally helping the party in central Edinburgh) but i did get involved in the poll tax stuff in 1989/90, trying to steer a course between Militant sociopaths and worried-looking Labour hacks whose strategy involved "not rocking any boats".
Just because I'm not a Labourite doesn't mean i don't have a familiarity with what went on - i just disagree with you about what constitutes "interesting". The general pitch from Scottish Labour of "Tories are bad, mmmkay, vote for us, mmmkay," like a Caledonian Mr Garrison just looked weak after a third election failure (1987) and your lay observer then had a dozen years of dullness* before Holyrood got going.
* Unless they were driving past Calton HIll and sounded their horn on seeing a 'Toot For Freedom' sign at the 24/7 vigil that went on there after the 1992 election ... now commemorated by a cairn on Calton Hill
The re-writing of history (cont.)
One of the current nationalist double-thinks is of course the notion that Labour delivered devolution because it wouldn't have dared do otherwise. Rather than having led the campaign for it and, indeed, made significant political sacrifices to ensure broad support for it. The support of PR was an extraordinary act of political altruism.
Royal High School? Yes, it was an anti-nat conspiracy. No other explanation is possible for not choosing antiquated and too small building to house the parliament.
Your oddly chosen dark age of 79-97 was, by any rational analysis, a time of ideas and ferment. Hence the fully fledged agreement read to roll into place once Labour were in power. Hence the poll tax campaign, the rise of the SSP and other minority parties etc
By contrast, I'd say it's been downhill since 2000 or so, by the same objective measures. This year's return to medievalism is the icing on the cake. Things, as they say,can only get better.
All these things and more
New Labour delivered devolution after the '97 general election win ... if one was being positive about the Labour Party then one would say, "Altruistic and responsive to the wishes of the people." If one was being a little more 'political' one might say, "Well that keeps Scotland onside for Labour, it's very unlikely that anyone will gain complete control of Holyrood and Labour gets to keep over 50 Scottish seats* at Westminster which is pretty crucial for its majority."
This is all true rather than a reinvention - but people have different angles on it.
The decision over RHS/Holyrood ... well, planners & politicians were basically clueless about the kind of space required for MSPs and their staff from the outset ... One of the reasons that Holyrood was late and over-budget was that it was redesigned while it was being built. It would have just been an equivalent cock-up had RHS been chosen then found to be too wee. (And RHS was actually on the shortlist of sites, along with Haymarket and Victoria Quay, says Wikipedia – i checked - while Holyrood was a late addition.
The 1979-97 period may have been a time of "ideas and ferment" if you were in the Labour Party - if you were a member i will take your word for it - but how much of that leaked out to the general public from Scottish Labour? Speaking as a non-member, i don't recall much. There may be an argument that it was non-party people getting up and doing stuff (via the miners strike, the poll tax campaign, the constitutional convention, that 1992-7 vigil up the road at Calton Hill, also the good/bad/ugly of the left wing parties like the SSP, or participation in peace movement) that drove the agenda.
Finally, if the major talent of Scottish Labour and Conservative and LibDems heads south for big jobs at Westminster then Scottish voters are surely going to vote for politicians north of the border who seem to be a. capable and b. taking it seriously. Looking at Holyrood at the moment Salmond seems like one of the few, perhaps the only one, who would be a front bench contender at Westminster. Maybe if Labour had sent Brown back up the road, or Liam came back to East Kilbride to be the Scottish Tories' saviour**, then things might be different.
If there's a McMassive Mingle in Glasgow in December, we should do this in the pub.
* in the 1997 election
** only kidding
The idea of the 80's Tories as "attractive" to a young man
of Caledonian means and persuasion is a strange one, but I suppose even the Whermacht had nice uniforms.
Interesting points.
even the Whermacht had nice uniforms.
Are you Bryan Ferry in disguise ?
Well, they did.
Good design deserves to be commended.
?
"Give or take a pro/con nationalist view, the overwhelming consensus amongst people I know is similarly left of field. How you can go through the same and arrive at a totally opposite conclusion I find perverse. Ditto with Michale Gove. Something else has got to be the cause. Meethinks their rabidly Unionist, Thatcherite fanboy worship speaks of other deep trauma and unhappiness. Loner boys who decided to show the cool kids and everyone else they don't care about being unpopular by taking the most extreme and shocking option open to them"
Let me get a handle on this. You're saying that you don't understand how someone from your socio-cultural background can look at the available evidence about how society is organised and then come to conclusions that are different from yours? Unless, of course, there is some deep-rooted psychological trauma?
Isn't that just a tad ... Maoist?
My thoughts exactly, sir!
What I find remarkable is that even after years of the most stodgy, statist, jobs-for-the-boys Labourism, many people in Scotland still cling to the view that all that's needed is even more of the same.
Until the current 65/35 public sector/wealth-creating ratio begins to be reversed in Scotland, things will continue in the same moribund fashion.
I like to think that Alex Salmond privately shares this view, but sadly Scotland appears to be firmly addicted to a big state so, savvy operator that he is, he's just going with the flow.
But outside of Liam Fox...
...aren't you two the only Scots Conservatives left? ;-)
Inside of Liam Fox, it's too dark to read. Just ask Adam Wer[snip - Libel ed.]
Can't speak for DCE,
but I'm not a Conservative. I have broadly libertarian views but find that no party really represents me. I do think it's in everyone's interest that the years of Labour domination have come to an end, as it was unhealthy. I am sympathetic to the idea of an independent Scotland, but I would prefer one that was more true to its Adam Smith, Enlightenment roots than the current bloated version.
*whispers*
It was a joke.
A shit one, apparently.
no worries, pal*
*a word that, ironically enough, signifies impending violence in Scotland.
;-)
Come ahead, square go then cunt.
(Note to Fraser, this is jolly banter, and I am attempting to converse in the colourful argot of our Caledonian brethren in an attempt to forestall conflict. I'm right in thinking that this ^ is Scotch for "have a splendid evening, my good man", yes?)
Expertly done,
that use of the word 'Scotch'.
Dr. Johnson would be proud of you ;-)
get it roon ye!
I'm not a Conservative. Like Dougie, I'd probably class myself as a libertarian.
I'm also an optimist and happen to think that we might be in for interesting times (and big political changes), mainly due to the continued abject failures of the political class.
PS
Nice songs, Bob.
Thanks, DCE. :)
reiterating:
if you found Scottish politics stodgy in the '80s (and many people did) then Anglo Conservatism Triumphant could well seem iconoclastic, sexy and interesting ... Thatcher seemed to be able to beat the Labour Party ('79, '83, '87), the Argentine Junta ('82), the domestic union movement in general and the NUM in particular ('84-'85) and even the old boy network in the City with Big Bang deregulation ('86) ...
the activities of lobby-fodder Scottish Labour MPs or indeed the talent-vacuum that was Strathclyde Fekkin Regional Fekkin Council (Fekkin) up to '96 hardly compared ... if you were Gove, for example, then it might have seemed like a choice between relatively wild, interesting times and progress with your Oxford Tory chums - with tangible evidence of successful Tory Revolution in the immediately preceding years - or the internecine teacup hurricane of Scottish politics. The comparison these days would be between signing for a top English Premiership club or for one of the Old Firm
in a way, the interesting thing is not that Fox or Gove were contrarian in Scottish terms, but that more Scots didn't look around at the political scene in the '80s and think, 'Oh bollocks to this, i want to be on the winning side in the big league...' So maybe BernkastelCues is on to something in the sense that an awful lot of Scots retained a resistance to the charms of the winning team back then - and not because they all love a public-sector dominated economy (Dougie - where did the figures come from? are we really as bad an Norn Irn?)
Answers own question in quiet moment
According to this bloke
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/johnmcternan1/100045333/ignore-the-mis...
Scotland has nowhere near 2/3rds of its GDP as public spending, while according to the BBC from three years ago, Scotland is actually less public-spending dependent than NE England, Wales or (especially) Northern Ireland ... more on a par with NW England
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/06/map_of_the_we...
BUT it's an imprecise science as this newspaper article quotes a figure of "at least 38.5%" although it is more recent
http://www.scotsman.com/business/item_club_in_warning_over_slow_growth_1...
Actually quite a lot of natural "Tories" in Scotland
It is by nature a fairly traditional place. Just can't bring themselves to vote for the Conservative and Unionist party.
Quite so
We need fewer teachers, nurses etc and more hedge fund managers and other Golgafrincham B Ark residents. That'll get the country back on its feet. Oh, hold on...
Hesitate to say this, but. Sigh.
The present financial crisis owes at least as much to government meddling in the market as it does to the excesses of Wall St / Canary Wharf. Said excesses were, in fact, only possible due to the massive gravitational pull of the supposedly rock-solid government 'securities'.
Alex Salmond was happy to revel in the reflected glory of the two Edinburgh behemoths RBS and HBOS, but it wouldn't be fair to single him out. Everyone went along with it, despite what some are trying to retrospectively claim.
Anyway, I've read recently that it was all actually Richard Nixon's fault, which should please all you 'progressives', being as he's one of the ultimate Bête Noires.
His decision, forty years ago*, to decouple the dollar from the gold standard, thereby allowing governments free reign to print unlimited amounts of monopoly money, led inexorably to our present predicament.
*demonstrating once again the wisdom of the Chinese leader who said in response to a question about the impact of the French Revolution 'it's too early to say'.
Net borrowing
The Guardian is good on stats and has figures for net borrowing (ie actual national debt) expressed as a percentage of GDP going back to 1993
under Major's government from 1993-96, net borrowing grew from 34.8% of GDP to 42.5%
under Brown as Labour chancellor, this figure actually fell from 1997-2001, down to 30.9%
but then it started going up again
by 2007, the figure was back at 37.2% (but still not as bad as Major's Tories in their last year or two) and then the financial crisis hit properly and everything went pear shaped
our future tax payments were shovelled at the banking system to prevent the breakdown of money and anarchy in the streets, while the economy tanked ... the following figures are net borrowing as a percentage of GDP again, but the figure in brackets is "with the bank bail out factored in" ...
2008: 42% (144.2%)
2009: 51.3% (155.7%)
2010: 59.4% (149.2%)
So in the last 3-4 years, our debt has gone up significantly - factor in the bank bail out and it's jut plain frightening, And as Dougie says, since money isn't "real" but based on contractual obligation and trust then trust can be in short supply when debt starts to spiral ... Plainly there was a consensus up to '07 or so that a UK-sized economy can carry up to 40% debt in proportion to GDP and everything toddles along nicely - but in short order that figure is now way over 50%, or peaked over 150% depending on how you count it ...
Government meddling?
Only if the lack of any controls and "rabbit in headlights" approach to City bluster can be classed as meddling. Where government is at fault is a lack of confidence in the application of common-sense.
Unintended consequences...
This video Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism and related ones here, from the same people behind the fantastic Keynes v Hayek rap videos that I've posted before, sums up in a far better way than I ever could how I have come to feel about the present clusterfuck and its roots.
DC Eisenhower - Not different, just "soooo" different
As we see from the thrust and parry of Gelnbervie and Mr Cakes, both seem to share my left of centre perspective but have radically different views on what they do with it. And thats fine. I also think the most audacious bit of politics in Scotland this year has been Murdo Frasers attempt to break from the UK Tories, as he recognises it is totally toxic, even to those of a rightist persuasion.
Not saying that we should all come to the same conclusions at all. Just offering an opinion that, when you've been subjected to the attempted wholesale destruction of your way of life by foreigners who can barely hide their contempt for you, it's an "unusual", shall we say, choice to so wholeheartedly buy into their political philosophy.
A kind of political Stockholm syndrome.
quite
"when you've been subjected to the attempted wholesale destruction of your way of life by foreigners who can barely hide their contempt for you"
What utter tosh. Still ... different strokes and all that ;)
I'm willing to hear your contrary view on that DC.
Show me the tosh...
well ...
If I claimed that Tony Blair was a shape-shifting lizard with telepathic powers and the ability to travel in time, would the onus be on everyone else to disprove my theory?
You made the outrageous statements, so I reckon the onus is on you to back them up with evidence.
What part will I start with? Destruction of our way of life?
Or that it was perpetrated by Foreigners who loathed us?
We can get all statistical on this if you like, but lets kick off with...
The destruction of Scottish manufacturing industry - bit of a game changer Scottish society wise, 1979-1990. I think we'll all agree..
The make up of the Thatcher Tory cabinets - English public school Oxbridgy types, with the odd uncle Jock in there to give it a patina of "Britishness", such as Younger or Lang.
Voting patterns of the Scottish 1979-1992 - Tory vote going down quicker that a turd in a flushed toilet. Questions about their legitimacy to govern in the top part of the United Kingdom. But never mind...
The poll tax introduction in Scotland - We can introduce the Poll Tax there totally risk free! See how the natives take it before we foist it on Berkshire.
PS: I'm not convinced Blair isny an evil alien lizard either.
and now the quickfire round ...
We're never going to agree on any of this are we? Although I may get back to you on the Blair-Lizard thing ;)
Anyway ... a quickfire response.
"Destruction of our way of life": No such thing happened.
"Foreigners": No, 'they' are not foreigners.
"Destruction of Scottish manufacturing industry": Yes, there was an economic policy that had really unfortunate and significant side effects (that's probably for another thread), but it wasn't aimed specifically at Scotland.
"Make up of the cabinet": That's entirely up to the PM; how many Scots held top positions under Blair and Brown? Should the English have felt hard done by about that?
"Scottish voting patterns": So what? We're electing a UK government. Parts of the country are just that - small parts within a big picture. Scotland, in that sense, is no more significant than Cornwall.
"Poll Tax": Bad policy and pretty stupid politics, I'll give you that.
BTW, do you think it's fair that Scotland as its own parliament and also 59 MPs who can vote on matters concerning the English electorate?
Your right DC, we are never going to agree..
But in response.
Destruction of way of life - Yes, it did. The legions of young unemployed woh 40 years ago would be apprentices kind of vouch for that. I think we may have to get statistical if we are to avoid a stright "no it wusny, Yes it was" empassse, but let me know if your up for it.
Foreigners - Yes, I'm afraid they are. Although this really depends on how British you and they feel.
Make up of the Cabinet - Thatchers was full of foreigners espousing policies very few of us endorsed. As for Blairs cabinet, we did get the benefit of Paxmans "Tartan Mafia" theories , that kind of make the same point.
Cornwall - Is a region of England. Scotland is a sperate state joined to the rest via the act of Union. Again, depends on whether you buy the concept of "Britain". I don't.
Scottish Parliament/No English equivelant - Totally unfair. Lets scrap the whole thing or move to a federal state.
(In a hurry, but covers the main points I think)
Given that a broad range of people...
... who now describe themselves as English, Scottish and Welsh all live on the same island off the French coast, I doubt if anyone on the landmass really has the scope to point at anyone else and say "foreigner" ... Jock Tamson's bairns etc (myself, from Aberdeen, i suspect i'm a Romano-Baltic, Pictish-Northumbrian mongrel with the odd bit of Norwegian in me whose distant forebears once spoke something not unadjacent to Welsh)
i've wondered about a credible right of centre party in Scotland too however, since Cameron & Chums, or the even more right wing alternatives (Fox, the uber-Atlanticists, the anti-Euro mob) from down south, just won't fly
but if you got a Scottish right-of-centre party that combined fairness (giving everyone a chance through education & healthcare) with notions of self-reliance, entrepreneurialism and can-do spirit and wrapped this up in an indigenous branding, then you might have a credible right of centre party in Scotland ... there isn't one at the moment
Murdo Fraser's actions are, also, interesting therefore ... to the critics ("you can't not have the Conservatives in Scotland") Fraser really only needs to point out that "even when we do have the Conservatives in Scotland, we don't get enough votes..."
I'm not using Foreigners in any pejorative sense..
The English just are. There are no "British".
As for the contempt bit, I'll draw your attention to messrs Starkey,Heffer, Hoggart, Jenkins etc etc.
yeah but
i just tend to regard Simon Heffer as a nobber rather than an English nobber
;-)
Foreign!?
The English? The people with whom we share a common language and culture? Exhibit A being ... The Word magazine. This is where the poisonous politics of difference ends up - with silly, man-made barriers that bear no relation to real people.
I'm now off to set up a barricade on Leith Walk, to keep out those foreigners from elsewhere in Edinburgh. And don't get me started on the wedgies. Clearly there isn't even a word that describes a difference that large.
Mr Cakes, you take liberties with the concept of nationality.
We share as much in common with the Irish or United States, in some cases even more.
But it would be absurd to suggest we let either run our affairs or that we do the opposite. In fact both of them fought hard to escape from the same state that was failing them that we are (I believe) on the brink of leaving.
The English are a wunnerful bunch of people, whose literature , music humour and history (not to mention beer and games they invented, like football) I love dearly. But we are different. We have our own history, culture, and sense of ourselves that is radically different. So, much as a love them I just don't want them to run my country any more. Thank you very much. Whats more, an increasing number of them seem to think so too.
I understand for a utopian socialist this may be a hard concept to grasp, but I really think you need to come out from behind the philosophical couch and look at the shiny screen of reality.
Yours Aye
Whatever 'Scottish' means
Views like yours make me feel ashamed to be it, though to be fair they are on the increase.
As we move towards the referendum on a divorce from the rest of the UK, things are, I predict, going to get ugly. The inevitable result of the politics of difference.
I have to confess to an interest here: my paternal grandmother was fron Norwich. Not a pure blood then.
Eh? why are you ashamed?
What is wrong with civic nationalism? No-one is suggesting that anyone is gonny have to wear badges on their clothes or anything. "Being "Scottish" is open to anyone who lives here and wants to be part of it. No-one is getting blown up or vilified. In fact, the process of leaving the UK is pretty remarkable for the lack of jingoistic ballcheese on view, especially from our side.
And we will continue to have friends, family, business, cultural contacts with our neighbours in the south long after we part - just like the Norwegians and Swedes do, or the Slovaks and Czechs.
Simply put, when a nation state enters an arrangement of convenience that suits all parties purposes for 200 years then fabydoo. When it stops doing so, then lets look at the alternatives. What is wrong with that?
Why do you always try and make it sound like Scottish nationalism (small "n") is akin to Aparthied South Africa, when you must know it is nothing of the sort?
PS: My maternal grandad was a sailor from Liverpool. C'mon the reds!
Why am I ashamed?
Because I find the politics of difference at best pathetic and at worst something much darker. Generally though, I just feel a pervasive sense of disgust. The notion of equating 'English' with 'foreign' is unutterably backward. And yet this is the basis of our ruling party.
Dark days. And, as always when the politics of difference hold sway, there will be a swift slide from silliness into broken windows and blood on the pavement.
US style politics in the UK
Clearly Adam and Liam are friends - they shared a flat, and he was best man at Liam's wedding. Not too surprising that they are both interested in politics and share many views. I share many views with many of my friends (though some are Tories). If they are anything more then that is up to them.
I think that here their joint fondness for the US neo-con view of the world has allowed them to fall into trying to replicate in the UK the (ridiculously) close ties between politicians and "advisors" sponsored by interest groups. If Werrity had been an official advisor he would have been bound by all sorts of rules. They tried to avoid them by not giving him an official role, but letting him carry out many of the activities of an "advisor". And then queued up to stab him in the back when they were caught.
This is another example of politicians trying to avoid the monitoring of their activities - along with Blair's unminuted sofa discussions, Gove's use of private e-mails, and Clegg on Blackberry writing "I dont want my fingerprints on it".
This really should be about the politics not the (not even alleged) sex.
Chris Huhne on Twitter
Not Clegg.
apologies
all these Lib Dem ministers look the same to me.
(only joking. I am clearly now so anti-Clegg that I ascribing to him things that he has not done. Unfair and not helpful.)
Don't sweat it
since he claims the credit for things he didn't do.
They should accept your appology.
And to add some political balance here's a clip of Michael Gove falling over.
I could watch that over and over and over...
In fact, I just have.
Mrs Bob....
...is much more amused by how amused I am, than by the clip itself.
Note how...
...he makes a great show of pointedly looking back at the exact spot where it happened as if expecting to see a deliberately placed banana skin, like in the Beano.
It was almost certainly a banana skin
placed there by the Brown administration
Indeed
A prime example of the mess that, the Tories incessantly say, Labour left behind.
Exactly
With astounding irrelevancy, Cameron even managed to shoehorn that exact line into his statement regarding Fox's resignation.
“He’s done a great job cleaning up the mess we inherited from Labour and I’m sorry to see him go”.
Commenting on the utter uselessness
of the preceding administration at every given opportunity is an ever-present of the political scene, surely?
I'm far from a fan of the Coalition or Cameron's Conservatives, by the way. I just think this is a pretty futile argument as every single government in the history of western democracy has done exactly the same thing and will continue to do so.
Absolutely
You're right. On this occasion though I felt that trotting out the same old line when dealing with the strange peccadilloes of an outgoing minster seemed a little desperate.
Wahaay!
You shouldnt laugh really. But...
Minor correction
According to the Guardian, the charity Atlantic Bridge was only closed in September this year.
oops
sorry - thanks; haste is no excuse etc
William Hague
Must be hoping that Fox's forced resignation stops the curiosity about it.
The disingenous
suggestion by anonymous "friends of Fox" that Wherrity is some sort of groupie and hanger-on is laughable.
You don't get to go to dinner with American Generals or Middle-Eastern Ministers of Defence or, for that matter, wander around The Ministry of Defence buildings just by "hanging around". Anyone who thinks differently should try and do it.
Pathetic !
Like the OP
and most people, I'd imagine, I don't care if Fox has a "special friend" in the William Hague-stylee. But "anonymous benefactors" paying for said friend to mooch about in Government work, looks very dodgy indeed.
The only thing i've learnt from this sage is
never trust anyone called Dr Fox.
But there is a good reason for caring
if they are "special friends" and it's something Foxy wants to keep quiet.
A defence secretary with a big secret is a defence secretary ripe for blackmail.
It matters nothing if you, me or anyone else couldn't give a monkey's which team he bats for.
If he wants to keep it a secret it's a problem for all of us, however liberal on sexual matters we may be.
For the record, I have no idea if the gay rumours are true - but I think there are real security issues if they are.
The other good reason for caring...
...if Fox is closeted (which, of course, I'm not saying he is, having no reason to doubt the unbeardiness of his happy marriage etc.) would be one of simple hypocrisy.
From the Herald, back in 2008:
When the LGBT society was finally admitted to the GUU, Fox resigned in protest.
I couldn't give a monkey's about anyone's sex life. It's their business. But if a politician has a homophobic stance on their CV, and is subsequently discovered to be gay (which, of course, I'm not saying Liam Fox is), that's different.
You will appreciate the irony
that they didn't want to let women in either.
Just a thought / PV.
Just a thought.
back in the day, when I served in the Royal Navy, there was a security process called positive vetting.
Essentially, the higher up the chain you were, the greater the level of vetting. (But it also included people who had access to sensitive / important information such as those working with sneaky beaky communications, & nuclear submariners).
The idea of getting a PV was to prevent someone from being able to be blackmailed. (I knew someone waay high in the food chain who had been striping somebody elses wife, & he had to fess up or lose his PV & therefore his job)
It went into all sorts of detail, financial, sexual/ marital fidelity, & political beliefs, (just a few from many).
Essentially it did its job & it worked.
My query/ concern is, would this process apply to the secretary of state for defence? & if not, why not?
I honestly think this story has not yet run its course, & some more cats will be coming out of the bag.
Its a loophole
Work in the lower echelons of anything defence related and you need basic clearance (BC). A little bit higher and you need proper security clearance (SC) which involves filling out a 16-page questionnaire.
Get involved in any truly sensitive stuff and you need developed vetting which involves interviews and men in black suits interviewing your first girlfriend and generally knowing more about you than you remember yourself. (I heard the story of someone at their DV interview being asked about what they got up to on their stag night many years before. When he said he couldn't remember much as he was very drunk the MoD offered to tell him all about it)
Get the top job and you don't actually need to be cleared, or so I am led to believe
The ironic thing is that after all this fuss, if Liam Fox applied to work in the MoD as a junior filing clerk he would probably fail the security vetting and not be allowed to do the job.
Fox resigns
Why oh why do they bother to hang it out so long when the writing has been on the wall for a week.
It's the assumption that the general population/great unwashed are fools that grates with me.
From the BBC
Why do they always say "because I've done nothing wrong I will, of course, be resigning" ?
he's resigned as head honcho of defence
this leaves him as an MP on a salary of £65,738
diddums
Apparently
he's still using the word 'blurred', when the outcome was clear to everyone else.
Fox on the Run
Well I never liked him since i I first heard him doing the Chart Run-Down on Independant radio years ago!
Not a real Dr.
etc
Ken Livingstone made a good point on
Questiontime last night, which I paraphrase here: there's absolutely nothing wrong with having external advisers from outside the usual Civil Service ranks or in them being paid. However, their role should be clearly stated, their affiliations and background published and their remuneration transparent.
The fact that Dr. Fox is unable to do any of this makes (now: made) his position untenable. It's a pity that someone who was by most accounts a very able Minister has to go but he has demonstrated unbelievable naivety and a total lack of political nous. These are not exactly the qualities you want from a man who is sent to negotiate international agreements on our behalf.
i would think that had the positions been reversed
and a Labour secretary of state for defence run a charity that wasn't really a charity, used charity funding for political ends, and hobnobbed with a special adviser (unelected, unrepresentative) who could be seen to be in the pocket of his funders (British and foreign), then the Conservatives would have kicked them about the head until their brain was coming out of their ears (metaphorically)
and - currenty listening to PM on Radio 4 - the cant and comment about "oh poor Liam" isn't doing my blood pressure any good ... frankly his conduct has been effing disgraceful - it's not a "blur" between the political and the private, it's flat-out misconduct with grave security ramifications, fek
What were they up to?
Politically now, does this mean we will now not know the full story? If, as some suggest, Fox was running his own unofficial foreign policy then should that not be investigated properly?
Allegedly
Fox was trying to help his friend to develop contacts with other countries defense ministries and contractors involved is selling things that such ministries like; i.e., help him develop a career as a middle man.
I must say it looks that way.
his own foreign policy
to be fair to him (which I admit I find difficult) I think most ministers have their own policies on how to run their departments, and push the agenda they believe in as hard as they can without actually breaking overall government policy. I happen not to agree with Fox's direction, but do with Ken Clarke - who is probably more distant from the nominal government policy.
a wee slimy bastard
Good riddance anglo-scot waste of space.
One thing in his favour
He's buggered off on his own accord.
Unlike William Hague, who also had a friend who accompanied him on foreign trips (though they did save money by sharing rooms...) yet managed to hold onto his job by wheeling out his wife to share her pain of having several miscarriages. The odious little shit.
What has happened
to Mrs Fox ?
Did she run off with Jonsey after all ?
Mrs Fox...
...or should that be Mrs Beard?
Not long ago...
...I found myself, in that random way that life sometimes serves up, talking to a prominent Labour peer. I asked him what he thought of the current crop of Conservative chancers. 'Liam Fox,' he said, 'he's the one you need to watch. He really scares me - he's got a long-term plan, and you don't want to stand in his way.'
If this little setback has derailed his plan, that's good news I think.
designs on being PM
one day apparently. Well and truly scuppered.
I worked at the MOD
under a, ahem, previous Tory administration, and I have found this whole story absolutely astonishing. As mentioned above, anyone with any access to anything remotely sensitive was 'PVd' and their background was raked over. This defies belief - how the Civil Servants there stood for this, I don't know. My suspicion is that an insider tipped the papers off....I know I would have done.
And let's not forget that Coulson was spared
the sort of deep PV mentioned above.
One of the most curious things
Was that Adam Werrity ran some sort of health consultancy when Fox was shadow health secretary yet coincidentally dropped all that to become a defence expert when Fox moved.
Matthew Parris
wrote one of his typically astute pieces earlier this year, which the Spectator has reprinted today:
Worth reading in full. It does give a bit of perspective to the 'politicians are coining it in' narrative. Some undoubtedly are, but there's a hell of a lot of easier ways of going about it.
Parris is usually pretty astute on such things...
... and I highly recommend his book "Chance Witness" as a look at what real life is like for an MP.
And I *think* it was he who expressed the notion some years ago that, whatever you think of the House Of Lords as an institution, at least it's made up of lots of different types of people of varying backgrounds and abilities, whereas the House of Commons is populated almost entirely by venal, greedy, ambitious, alpha-type, power-hungry borderline sociopaths.
Getting back to the matter at hand,
the perhaps uncomfortable fact is, according to this article from Matthew D'Ancona, that Dr. Fox may well be a natural, ahem, Massive member, given his love of a certain favourite of this parish...
I do not have a homophobic bone in my body...
..which normally implies a "But.."
But in this case, no it doesn't.
Dr Fox may be gay. William Hague may be as well. I don't care about their sexual orientation. It has no bearing at all on their ability to conduct thei jobs.
Their desire to conceal it concerns me. As was said above, Positive Vetting exists to obviate the risk of people in high-security positions being exposed to the risk of blackmail, but does not seem to stretch as far as the Home Secretary and the Secretary Of State For Defence. Or, indeed, the Prime Minister and one of his fellow ministers. It might have been twenty odd years ago but John Major and Edwina Currie..
This is not a matter of homophobia. Or hetorophobia. It is a matter of honesty.
A matter of honesty.
Summed up in a nutshell LL.
Well said.
Particularly when it leads another former cabinet minister
To claim £20,000 fraudulently in housing "expenses" rather than admit he lived with his boyfriend.
Again, I have no problem at all with David Laws living with another man. I just object to paying for it.
I was beginning to think I had dreamed it,
but there were once rumours of a dalliance with Natalie Imbruglia. Now, if I may interject a very The Word word at this point. Beard. Well, if so, that's a full-blown Charles Darwin job, no? Credit where it's due.
I'm learning more about the good doctor all the time, most pertinently from my point of view that he, like me, grew up in a council house in East Kilbride, and that he, unlike me, attended St. Brides' Roman Catholic secondary school. His subsequent Tory career places him very definitely outside of the normal political profile of a West of Scotland Catholic. A more typical example of which would be his fellow Dr. (the man who taught George Galloway every song in the IRA songbook, according to GG himself) John Reid.
All of which makes him quite fascinating, to be honest.
My point exactly Dougie
He is (politically speaking) a very queer fish indeed.
Reminds me...
...of Frank Skinner's bit, back in the 90s, about Will Carling. Sunday morning, round to a mate's, sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea. He holds up the tea towel and goes "Fucked her."
Oh dear,
A 'Roman Catholic' to boot. That's not good is it Dougie. Not good at all. Well spotted. IRA sympathiser probably. Not a good God fearing UDA loving, BNP supporting racist bigot like Good Normal Folk eh Dougie?
I'll leave people to draw their own comparison
between my post and your reply and decide for themselves whether it's reasonable.
WTF?
Niscum ... what an extraordinary post.
Thank you.
.
See me? See burds?
I remember the Natalie Imbruglia rumours. When Fox was campaigning to become Tory leader, I thought that a winning strategy would have involved keeping those stories in circulation.
Had I been his campaign manager, I'd have advised him to issue a statement of plausible deniability ("I have no wish to discuss my private life") while wearing a t-shirt bearing the legend:
NATALIE ... YEP. BEEN THERE.
Cameron wouldn't have stood a chance against that.
I find it quite amusing that the good doctor
is now caught up in an imbroglio instead of an Imbruglia.
You could wait a lifetime...
...for this kind of highly specialised and wildly unlikely pun opportunity to come along, couldn't you Drakey!? :-D
I'm SURE there must be similar mileage in 'Werrity' (and, yes, yes, yes, I don't mean all that mileagie to Dubai, Sri Lanka, Krakatoa, the Rings of Saturn and wherever else the creepy little toad went on the coat-tails of Fox!).
As you can imagine, Colin,
I was Torn about whether to use such a tortuous pun or not.
Which reminds me:
(Clip is the signed performance of Natalie Imbruglia's hit at The Secret Policeman's Ball)
As the great David Nobbs said on Twitter...
...Werrity is either the name of a Dickens character or a speech defect.
Friends Friends Friend
(At least I managed to shoehorn a Prog reference in there)
Anyone who has worked in business or local politics will know this goes on all the time. They usually get away with it because the press are not so interested in local issues. I was on the receiving end of fogey-ism back in the day when a company I worked for was taken over by Manchester City Council. Funny enough that involved someone who was the best man at a prominent person's wedding.
Follow the money.
Interesting Liam Fox trivia
Did you know his brother Colin is the leader of the Scottish Socialists Party?
Must make Christmas an interesting holiday.
!
Cor, and indeed, blimey! I had no idea that they were related.
And their mum is called Noosha
...
"All I've got's
a s-s-single end..."
Blimey.
Liam Fox is Ben Goldacre's brother?
Bad Politics
and questionable peer reviews
Blimey
Liam Fox sang backing vocals for Andrew Gold?
"Liam Fox sang backing vocals for Andrew Gold"
....yes indeed: his oily tones are heard to great effect on 'Never Let Him Slip Away' - a song dedicated to Adam Werrity.
But seriously, this Werrity guy: there may be an element of schadenfreude here but the more I read about this fellow the more irritated I became with him. Yes, the taxpayer doesn't (as yet) appear to have directly funded his absurd lifestyle, but for some reason the very fact that a circle of Very Wealthy People with political interests can be apparently nudged (by Liam Fox) towards directly subsidising the 5 star lifestyle of a ridiculous man who seems to have done absolutely nothing with his life bar toady around after Liam Fox intensely annoys me.
It seems clear from the coverage that his jet-setting didn't actually make any difference to any of their interests. In fact, I'm left with the suspicion that Fox simply liked having someone there to faun around him and to let him (Fox) believe that he was operating his own agenda above/beyond that of the govt's to which he was elected and within which he was serving. He reminds me very much of a man I used to work for. He thought he was cleverer than everyone else and could get away with running his own empire within an empire. He wasn't and he couldn't.
Let's hope this is the last we hear of Fox and let's hope Werrity gets a rude awakening and has to make his own way in life now.
Bah, humbug...