Sunday 30 May 2010

Alexander Avoided Capital Gains Tax

Next!
You really couldn't make it up if you tried. Now Danny Alexander, bad (very bad) choice of replacement for trougher David Laws at the Treasury, has been caught avoiding Capital Gains Tax - you know, the tax he'll be responsible for ramping up as part of his new job. Sorry, but Cameron has set a precedent, has a principle he must (and I think will) follow, and so has to fire Alexander too. There'll be fewer tears over his loss I imagine than there were for 'rising star' and 'genius', David Laws.

Some will be asking why this is happening. It's very simple really and it has nothing to do with homophobic witch-hunts, Labour sting operations (lol) or right wing, anti-coaltion smear conspiracies. That's loony stuff. The reason is that while they were the no-hoper, hotchpotch third party that generally behaved like weasels in a sack behind the scenes (still do), during the expenses scandal they were basically ignored by the Telegraph in what was a target rich environment. There were only so many pages in the paper each day, and the editors rightly preferred to focus on the major players and the yellows got away with it, even to point where Clegg actually thought he could boast about it in the Commons! This is the hubris. Now that senior Lib Dems, to their huge surprise and thanks to a rare general election outcome, have found themselves doing real government jobs, they are subject to that delayed scrutiny. Moreover, it is all the more intense because they are being picked off one by one instead of en masse, as the Tories and Labour MPs and ministers were. So much the better.

It goes without saying - for me at least - that the Lib Dems fully deserve everything they get, and so the sight of senior MPs and some well known mainstream political bloggers defending one of them, often on the most ridiculous of grounds, is damn well nauseating. One good thing will come out of this new wave of expenses revelations, however: pretty soon, the Conservative government will run out of Lib Dems to put in the vital Treasury Chief Sec. role (they'll be on the Sarah Teather human mouse pretty soon).

Then maybe the country will get the person it really needs in that job - John Redwood - and, I predict, with the coalition still more or less in tact.

Every "cloud" as they say...

12 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Actually, looks like he's innocent...you could just hear the disappointment in the BBC's newsreader's voice. Someone is seriously trying to stir some shit on the Coalition.

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  3. Maybe. But I don't think my line on this qualifies as 'shit stirring'. I'm just reacting to what's coming out, and saying what I hope will be the result. Personally, as I said in the post, I think it's just the Telegraph doing its job and holding the Lib Dem contingent to account over their expenses. Good journalism to me. Besides, David Cameron made himself something of a hostage to fortune (or to the Telegraph) when he guaranteed some months ago that any trougher caught on his watch would lose their jobs, whether they technically didn't break the rules or not.

    All this tells me is that the mainstream political bloggers and the MPs they answer to had thought the expenses thing had gone away. They thought wrong.

    Ultimately I think Cameron will come out stronger from all this, whatever the Toby Youngs and Iain Dales of this world say. But only if he sticks to his principles. If he doesn't, then things can only get worse (the Telegraph will - rightly - go after him.

    I know, I know, UB: Gordon Brown's gone so I should be cheerful and all that. Well, yes, and I am. But I also want a government that isn't full of the same old troughers we had before, especially if they're Libdum ones. I'm not going to just suck this up and keep schtum about it, regardless of whether it gives the BBC or Labour some sort of misplaced sense of succour. The socialists are fools to think this reflects well on them in any way, and so are the Tories who agree with that conclusion.

    Hey, but what can I say? I'm partisan, right! So go figure.

    I wonder what you said in that comment you deleted...

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  4. Just a typo. I'm just a bit suspicious of what's going on at the Telegraph. They have had the unredacted expenses data for over a year now, how come all this came to light in the last few days? Now far be it from me to accuse your common or garden variety paper hack of being a bit shit but I am. Someone has clearly been briefing them. It certainly isn't the tories, Laws was well liked and even Alexander seems reasonably popular compared to the likes of Huhne and Cable. Have the libdem left flank gone rogue? Doubtful, the may do eventually but it's far too soon. Nope, my money's on Labour's old spin operation. I really want to know why Campbell was holfding that framed photo of Laws.

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  5. Now THAT theory, Rob, (rogue disaffected leftist Libdums doing the shitstirring) really IS interesting. I like it. It's the first one I've heard that actually makes some sort of sense. I think it's a real runner.

    I'm gonna have to have a good think about that one. Might be a two-bottler problem - (of a very unassuming but mysterious Chasse Du Pape I stumbled upon in the supermarked yesterday. Bought two crates of the stuff).

    There'll be headaches tomorrow. Humph: I care.

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  6. It's a bank holiday, it'll be worth it!

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  7. Hey, maybe they're working with Campbell...

    What a scoop!

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  8. I found my way to this blog from a comment on Tory Bear, in which you wrote, "Grow up you pathetic wannabe."

    I've read several of your posts on this site and they all seem to follow the same style. Poor or missing punctuation, opinion dressed up as facts with little or no evidence, name-calling in place of analysis.

    Whilst that combination can make for entertaining reading, one doesn't look to the tabloids for incisive political insight, and with good reason.

    You display a clear anti-Lib-Dem bias and yet you claim to be "supporting the new government". Obviously you only want to support the Conservative part, because the Lib Dems "deserve" to be "picked off one by one".

    It bothers me that the Telegraph thinks it's okay to hold on to sensitive information about individuals and release it for its own purposes months later.

    I can understand the paper wanting to serialise it and get a decent mileage from the scoop, but to reveal nothing about certain MPs until they're in a position of power and then bring them down has a destabilising effect on the Government, particularly at this stage in its life when it's still trying to find its feet. This does the whole country a disservice.

    I agree that what David Laws did was technically wrong, but for the right reasons. As I understand it he had very little option, short of publicly revealing his homosexuality which he should not be forced to do.

    By the way, "trougher" is not a word.

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  9. D, I agree that John Redwood would be a first class Chief Secretary, although I'm not sure he'd be comfortable in a coalition government.

    kalessin, "what David Laws did was technically wrong but for the right reasons"? Are you kidding? It was just wrong. He was claiming money from taxpayers and giving it to his partner in supposed "rent". Of course he had an option. He could have not claimed the money.

    And "trougher" is slang that all the readers of this blog would readily understand.

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  10. @"kalessin"
    "Poor or missing punctuation, opinion dressed up as facts with little or no evidence, name-calling in place of analysis."

    Lol. Examples please. I would add that when you have a busy life outside your blogging hobby, it's pretty difficult to check every typo. You must be one of those people who corrects people's speaking in public. I am awfully grateful for the criticism about my 'poor style' (although I would point out I've had no complaints so far - before you, that is). I shall shape-up as best I can.

    Now I'll give you some advice: In future, though, kalessin, be a little briefer with your comments and dispense with the ad hominem and irrelevance in your comments. "I disagree" with one or two reasons why would have sufficed with this one, for instance. IN other words, you're the one weakening his point with spurious, extraneous extra bits designed to tear down the writer and how he writes, rather than what the writer says. That, friend, is cheap.

    As for that Bear person: I can't remember the context of that comment I made - I think it was last year some time when he got it totally, totally wrong about young Tory activist who was kicked out of the party for saying the 'wrong thing'. So 'pathetic wannabe' Bear certainly was at that time. Now he's with Guido, I suppose he's got whatever it is he wanted, so he's half way there. Maybe all he wanted was followers like you to comment on his punctuation.

    I look forward never having to speak to you again.

    Adam: many thanks ;)

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  11. Uncle Bob raises a very interesting point.

    I really want to know why Campbell was holfding that framed photo of Laws.

    Does Mr Campbell make a habit of keeping framed photographs of gay male politicians to hand? (No pun intended)

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  12. Lol @newsy/ yeah!

    Btw, what's happened to your website mate?

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Any thoughts?