Ming The Merciless Strikes Again

The taste for the blood of human prey must be pretty overwhelming for a grizzled political werewolf like Menzies Campbell. He can't get enough of it. Certainly Charles Kennedy's 80 proof claret clearly wasn't enough to slake a thirst like Ming's, even though it did poison his leadership. Now he's stalking little Bercow, too, and seeking to replace him, just like he did with Kennedy, as Iain Dale reports.

I'm suggesting there must be some sort of political bloodlust at work here, because he certainly can't be doing it consciously. He who wields the knife seldom wears the crown and all that. At least, not for very long. You would have thought he of all people would have learnt that lesson pretty comprehensively. It seems not. So no, Ming must be driven by some kind of supernatural desire to decapitate colleagues, even those that pose no threat to him - though perhaps do represent an obstacle to his ambition. Target and destroy.

Even so, I would not be sorry to see that duplicitous little git Bercow ousted, even by a fresh-brains-addicted political LibDum zombie like Menzies Campbell. But it's just worth remembering now and then that the ends seldom justify the means. Whatever the outcome, however joyful, the "means" have a habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.

Bercow Would Be No Great Loss

After the revelation that little Johnny Bercow's beanpole wife (relatively speaking) is standing in local council elections for the Labourists in Westminster, today the Telegraph reports that he has spent a small fortune redecorating the Speaker's grace and favour apartments. Cost to you and me? A cool £45,000. So the story goes, it was wifey Sally Bercow (you know, the prospective Labour local councillor) and not little Johnny who was the brains behind this latest bit of troughing. How predictable. The Telegraph then goes on to explain why this should be a major embarrassment to the wee man:

Emails reveal that Mrs Bercow compiled a lengthy “shopping list” of items that she wished to have changed in the Speaker’s historic official residence within days of her husband’s election.

The new documents, released under Freedom of Information laws, also disclose that Mr Bercow has spent almost £13,000 on entertaining and hospitality - including a three-night trip to Rome costing almost £4,000 - in just three months.

Mr Bercow had faced criticism over his use of expenses when he was a backbench Conservative MP, claiming the maximum amount permissible to fund another Westminster flat.

The new disclosures about Mr Bercow's spending are likely to prove embarrassing for the new Speaker who was elected on a promise to restore trust in Parliament in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.

During his campaign to become speaker, he said: “It is high time the House (of Commons) was run by professionals on a transparent basis, ensuring that we are accountable to the people who put us here.”

Michael Martin, his predecessor as speaker, had been criticised for his use of taxpayers’ money, including extensive renovations of the speaker’s official residence which ran to more than £700,000.

After succeeding him, Mr Bercow vowed to modernise Parliament and make it “accountable to the people” and transparent in its operation.

He pledged to surrender the MP's second homes allowance worth more than £24,000. However, the new documents disclose, he has already ordered renovations on his new Westminster appartment worth more.

In August, the Speaker admitted that he spent just over £20,000 on refurbishing his official apartment before moving in with his wife and children.

However, documents have now revealed how the true cost was actually £45,581, as Commons officials agreed to account for extensive redecoration and other work as 'routine maintenance' which Mr Bercow did not declare publicly.

Mr Bercow is expected to be under pressure to release a breakdown of the work conducted as 'routine maintenance'.

Should we be furious? Yes. Should he be punished? Yes. But how? Well, I would think the obvious measure would be first, when the Tories win the next election, he is removed as Speaker. He was, after all, placed in the role by a Labour government hell bent on hurting the Tories, not 'reforming' parliament and the expenses system - even though some might be moved to think that this strategy has backfired (Bercow, let's be fair, has not been quite the full-on patsy I imagine Labour expected him to be). The fact that they thought he, a Tory MP (of sorts), was the man for that job speaks volumes about the man.

And it brings me to the second part of his punishment. He is no longer a Tory MP, sure, but he should be left in no doubt that he will never be allowed to be a Tory MP, or even a member of the Conservative party, again. That should just about do it. Yes, I think so.

Just in case you're not convinced yet or you think that I'm being somehow 'mean' to the irritating, money-grubbing little scrote, read the rest of the report:

Emails show how Mrs Bercow, who last week declared her desire to become a Labour councillor in Westminster, communicated with Parliamentary officials over the refurbishment requirements.

“The existing wall paper is very office/board-roomy,” she wrote on June 30th.. “So, if at all possible, can the walls be redecorated.

“Can the TV be replaced with a larger one and moved into a more central location (like it or not, it will be a focal point for the kids!!!),” she continued. “I assume it will have SKY and we’ll need a DVD player too if possible.”

The work – initially estimated to have cost £23,400 by July 8th - had almost doubled in price by the end of the same month.

The emails show that Commons officials were becoming concerned about the spiralling cost of the work. However, they agreed to allow the Bercows to continue with the renovations.

One official wrote on July 1st: “My concern is that the list is getting longer, which isn’t technically a problem, but I know that you are very mindful of the costs and only wish to do what is considered as ‘reasonable’.

“The latest version [of the renovations spreadsheet] has everything included and I think that the best way to view it, is as a shopping/wish list. If any costs come out as excessive…we can always review the options and make the necessary decisions.”

An email discloses that the £45,000 cost of the work was split into two spreadsheets before the lower £20,000 figure was released in August.

Any redecorating which had not been done for at least five years was described as the 'routine maintenance' and excluded.

However, it can also be revealed how the costs of this routine maintenance doubled between an estimate in early July of £11,500 and the final cost of £24,922 just three weeks later.

A source close to the Speaker said that most of the extra work was to parts of the official residence which are not used as the family’s private living quarters.

He said that the £20,000 figure which had been released originally represented the additional cost to the taxpayer of the Speaker being someone with children.

“We tried to isolate the costs to the taxpayer of Mr Bercow and his family moving in,” he said. “A lot of the other work is beyond the control of the Speaker and is determined by English Heritage and other bodies.

“Mr Bercow has no plans to do anything, this is a one off.”

The new Speaker has also spent £12,812 on entertaining and official functions during his first three months. This is far higher than the amounts spent by Lord Martin of Springburn during his final three years in office.

Mr Bercow’s entertainment costs include £3,599 on a three night trip to Rome to attend a G8 Speaker’s conference. He was accompanied by three other people whose identities are not disclosed in the released documents but are thought to be officials.

He is the second youngest Speaker in history and the first in living memory to have three young children – Oliver, Freddie and Jemima, who are all under six.

The official speaker's residence is underneath Big Ben in the Palace of Westminster. It was designed by Charles Barry and contains a state dining room and a canopied bed to be slept in by the monarch on the night before a coronation.

Mr Bercow has previously said that much of the renovation work was necessary to make the apartment child-friendly. For example, locks had to be fitted to the windows for the safety of his young children.

He previously lived in another flat in Westminster which was also funded by the taxpayer. He repaid almost £8,000 earlier this year after The Daily Telegraph raised questions about his lawful avoidance of capital-gains tax on the sale of two properties.

However, Mr Bercow is thought to have refused to surrender his gold-plated pension – which guarantees to pay half his income when he retires regardless of how long he remains in the job. As he is only currently aged 46, this is a very valuable perk.

In an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Mr Bercow will defend his wife’s right to stand as a Labour candidate in next year’s council elections.

But he acknowledged that he could expect the mother of his three children to be portrayed as “a cross between Jerry Hall, Lady Macbeth and Eva Peron” because of her decision to get involved in electoral politics.

“My wife isn't my chattel, she's my wife,” he will say on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

“She is a private citizen who has her own views and is an independent person. And it has long been known that my wife is a supporter of the Labour Party, so I don't think there's anything odd, embarrassing and certainly there's nothing underhand about it.”

Grrr.

Bercow was no great loss to the Tory party. He will be no great loss as Speaker. Besides, then he'll be free to do what all the signs seem to point to him wanting to do for so long: join the Labour party. At least that will put him in the Missus' good books. She clearly wears the trousers, after all.

PS:
I know I was a bit slow off the mark with this one - been doing stuff. For a more immediate - and rather more violent - reaction, therefore, try Tangled Web. Great!

Bercow Can't Add Up

Bercow seems to think that he is going to be the star of the All-New Reformed-Parliament Show. So far, though, he has not struck me as the sort of person who will do anything other than an absolutely terrible job. He's full of what is clearly Labour reform spin and he sounds, frankly, dishonest. Why? Well, he can't even take it on the chin that his own party didn't vote for him. The Tories knew he was being forced on them out of Brownite spite - and the sums speaks for themselves. His vote count equates almost perfectly with the number of people on the Labour benches, combined with a few lefty Lib Dems. Young's votes almost exactly correlate with the entire Tory body count, combined with a few dozen moderate Lib Dems, a very few decent Labourists and a smattering of Independents. (The rumour is that three (mad) Tories voted for him.)

Watch yesterday's interview with Boulton (although the Bradby one was far better - but it's a hassle to rip). This turncoat idiot thinks he's some kind of minister. And a Labour one, to boot. Well, make your own mind up.


Then we have today's Telegraph report that the 'reform' these MPs have opted for is nothing of the kind, (as I humbly predicted yesterday). The 'transparency' promised will not be forthcoming. They've covered all their bases and protected their piggy backsides once again. Are we surprised? I think not.

But one thing is clear to me, and should be clear to everyone else: this is all Brown's work. Parliament is rotten, sure. But if you want to know what (or rather who) represents the diseased heart of that rot, then this Bill should provide final, incontravertible evidence: it is Brown. As the Heff says, Bercow is Labour's last insult to voters. Sure, he's Labour's last insult, but this Bill is not Brown's last lie. There will be many more of those to come in what will be the last months of his pitiful premiership. He lies. Through his teeth. All the time. That's just "what he does" - ably aided and abetted by the likes of Balls, Harperson, Woodward, Mandelson - and now Bercow.

Guido Fawkes has examined the government's new Bill in some detail and has written about it in what I think is one of his best pieces yet. These are his conclusions:

[It] is a stitch up, we don’t need more rules and self-selected regulators, we need reform of the expenses system, together with clarity, transparency and enforcement of the rules. The voters will kick out MPs if they can identify crooks, in this sense in a democracy voters are the ultimate regulator of politicians. This whole idea is ill-founded, we don’t need to intermediate democracy with another quango or committee, this approach has already failed.

We need only to empower voters with enough information so that they can determine the truth about those who seek to represent them. The truth is all we need, not redactions, not more quangocrats.

Amen to that. And it's a message that needs to be shouted out loud every minute of every day from now until the dissolution. Someone in that disreputable House will eventually listen, surely.

One thing we do know for sure, though, is that that person won't be John Bercow.

All he does is speaks.

Fake Reformers, Fake Reform

So the first Bercow 'big reform' is to cast off the Speaker's wig. This is a laughable, disingenuous gesture designed somehow to provide a visual representation of that 'clean break' the Berk referred to in his cringe-making speech yesterday. But if you take the wig off the man, all you are left with is the man - and this man is part of the problem. Dan Hannan:

...the hairpiece isn't simply a mediaeval relic. It's a reminder to its wearer it that his office is bigger than he is. It was a bad start when Michael Martin arrogantly refused the headgear. "It's just not me," he insisted, presuming to take the job on his own terms - an attitude which prefigured his eventual disgrace. Had the old boy slapped on the horsehair, it might have inspired him to try to live up to the role, to be a bigger man.

Tee hee. But through this first, empty act, Bercow's immediately fallen into line and begun to do precisely the kind of thing that Brown-Labour wants: distracting, fake iconoclasm motivated not by any genuine principle or sincere wish to modernise - or 'reform' - constructively a parliament that has been rendered rotten only by its current members' systematic abuse of its time-honoured traditions, but by a simple, dishonest desire to stay put. And they will do anything and say anything they can to that one end. As Peter Oborne said in a TV interview today, Bercow is the manifestation of the corruption that has crippled parliament. He was forced to pay six grand of evaded capital gains tax and over a thousand pounds' worth of dodgy claims for a personal accountant.

How can this man, along with all the other MPs now tainted by serious and proven sleaze, be trusted to reform the system? The answer is he most certainly cannot. The problem is, that question is part of the distraction. The fundamental point is this: forget trust - we're well beyond that - MPs, including Bercow, no longer have the moral authority to change or create law. For Labour to think that it can install its placeman in the Speaker's chair and carry on regardless is a (further) deep insult to the electorate. It is a travesty and the so-called reforms that will be generated consequently will be no more than meaningless windowdressing and a waste of precious parliamentary time.

It has already begun. Harriet Harperson's first announcement on reform is to table legislation making it a criminal offence (a criminal expense?) for MPs to fiddle their fees or fail to declare their interests punishable by 'up to a year' in stir. Have you stopped laughing yet? Aside from the fact there's no mention of existing legislation that covers the small matter of tax evasion - or of false accounting - here we have in your proverbial nutshell the contradiction that will confront this bankrupt government and the parliament it helped to corrupt: legislation like this would not be necessary if honourable members were just that, honourable. That they deem this legislation necessary merely proves to the public that they consider themselves untrustworthy. "Well, if they can't trust themselves with public money, why the hell should we," the public will rightly think. (I do.)

They will go around in circles, new Speaker in the chair he does not merit. They will make laws to constrain a future generation of politician who might well need no such constraint, given the inevitably far higher level of public expectation and scrutiny that new generation will accept it will have to endure. What's clear is that this government and this parliament were incapable of obeying the letter and the spirit of the rules they themselves partly created. They were also incapable of exercising judgment in the realm of propriety, both individually and collectively. There is therefore no reason for them to expect people to swallow the notion that they themselves, in some sort of "reflexive lawmaking", should be permitted to make a new law that forces them to obey the rules. We say: no thanks, you no longer have the right. Besides, it will miss its target because such a law is always contingent upon what those rules actually are and those rules are made by, you guessed it, MPs. You see? Going around in circles.

The old system might be flawed, but flawed or not its basic operating premise, that MPs are honest and honourable, is essential if we are to have real democracy. It requires a degree of faith on all our parts to be successful. An honour code is the only way our elected representatives can exercise the power we give them to supervise the sovereignty of parliament, thereby ensuring the continued health of the body politic. And therein we find the root-cause of the problem: one dishonourable MP can cause enormous damage to parliament and to that health. Six hundred dishonourable MPs, including the Prime Minister, and you have a severe crisis. And the longer they stay in parliament, the graver the damage they do, by the very fact of their continued presence. But it should be unsurprising to us that these people are reluctant to leave, regardless of this damage. They are who they are, after all: they don't care.

Bercow, with his fake iconoclasm, is merely another sign of that 'graver damage' to which I refer. This man is an insult to our intelligence, with or without a wig. He's the latest symptom of a decayed, diseased legislature. The chief carriers of the disease are Gord'elpus Brown and his gang of amoral Labourists. (Tory sleaze has become a mere secondary infection, incredibly.)

The cure? It's a purgative and it always works: a general election.

"Bercow's Not A Tory!" -Cameron

Puppet and master

Conservative Home has already given some inkling as to the scale of the animosity Labour has potentially generated by playing politics with the speaker's election. In cynically manoeuvering John Bercow into a winning position, the Labour goons have gleefully set Cameron and the shadow front bench on collision course with the man who now looks certain to be has now been elected to that office.

Revealing blog from Tom Harris MP:

"A Labour colleague was in the toilet next to the chamber just before the first ballot, when he was joined by David Cameron in the adjacent urinal.

“David, I’m about to vote Tory for the very first time in my life,” said my friend jovially.

“John Bercow doesn’t count!” replied Cameron."

Job done, then. Poisonous Brown Labour have screwed and skewed parliamentary process once more. These events must surely cast doubt upon the genuine freedom and secrecy of the voting process. And there we were thinking this sort of thing only happened in Zimbabwe and Iran.

A terrible result for British democracy, once again. Bercow has no support from the main opposition party and is a serial expenses abuser to boot. It will be in his interest to follow the Brown line of blaming 'the system', as though MPs are somehow victims of their own perfidy and greed, because 'the system' let them get away with it. And once more, we, the electorate, are told effectively to go f**k ourselves.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...

God, Not Bercow!

So Labour's latest stitch-up is now under way. With rumours of whips being sent out to try to bully Labour MPs into voting for Beckett (God, not her!) reported in the Times apparently proving to be without foundation, it seems today's Guardian was right after all: there has been a plot in Labour's ranks to install the weakest Tory candidate, someone they will be able to push around, someone who is sympathetic to Gordon Brown's fake 'reform' agenda for the House of Commons and someone who allows them to tick the "Tories turn" box, thereby heading off that fair criticism (which Beckett's election would have generated).

Widdecombe looks out of it, which is a shame -she would have been colourful - but Young and Haselhurst are still in, so there's still hope that the nightmare scenario of Bercow or Beckett might yet be averted. I've crossed everything crossable.

Update 6.59pm
Bercow: 221; Young: 174

All the others are most likely out, according to Sky's MP twitter.

The nightmare's becoming reality....

Update 7.14pm
Some MP's just twittered:
"Some people are saying Bercow is a dead cert. Others not so sure. But Beckett and Beith's votes will mostly go to him."
Dammit.

Result at 7.45 8.30 8.00 8.45, apparently.
Update 8.02pm
Bercow has well-over 300 votes.

Update 8.28pm
Jim Knight MP has just twittered that it's a dead heat! The daddy of the House gets the casting vote in that case. Cool...

Update 8.30pm
It was rubbish - it's Bercow, comfortably. Damn you Labour. Another stitch-up.

Bye Bye Elections

Even in defeat, Michael Martin yesterday could not bring himself to show one iota of contrition for his attempts - using our money - to block publication of MPs' expenses last year. Instead he chose to mark the occasion of his long-overdue passing by launching a pretty scathing attack not on his own party, (to which he has always, outrageously, remained tribally loyal like a good little corrupt Scots Labour, trade unionist good ol' boy should), but on all three party leaders for 'not supporting him'. Well, the Guardian today firmly gives the lie to that claim and points the finger of blame squarely at the Labour benches, front and back, for the failure of MPs to reform the way they pay themselves.

Martin, effectively the first Speaker to be ejected from office for nearly 300 years, rounded on MPs, describing their response to his own package of reforms as "deeply disappointing".

He said: "I wish with all my heart that that package of recommendations had won the confidence of the House [of Commons] last July. And I wish that party leaders had shown then some of the leadership they have shown now".

He accepted that such votes on MPs' pay are traditionally not whipped, but pointedly said: "This does not remove the responsibility of leaders to speak up for common sense and for the obvious wishes of the country in seeking necessary reform."

He reminded MPs : "Half of all Members did not attend to vote, and more than half of those who did vote rejected the proposals. I regretted that then: I deeply regret it now, and I expect that many Members of the House now share that regret."

In reality, David Cameron did whip his shadow cabinet to support the package, and much of the resistance was organised by Labour backbenchers.

Brown himself did not vote, some cabinet members including Jacqui Smith and Andy Burnham rejected the package, and 30 ministers voted for the status quo.

We all know why, too, don't we. That's thirty ministers on the gravy train, house-flipping and tax evading their way to becoming millionaires. It is true that the Tories and the Lib Dems have been guilty of abusing the expenses system, but their sleaze pails by comparison to the systematic fraudulence of many Labourists, especially ministers. And all Martin could do is continue to try to fudge the issue and blur the truth with his self-regarding, petty, crooked little speech. No wonder Brown looked like he didn't give two hoots what the Speaker was saying. He'd probably authorised the final version.

("The Scottish Connection" is the big, as-yet unwritten story of this catastrophic government's disastrous effect on so many aspects of British society. For instance: the Union, the banking system, the economy, the Civil Service, the House of Lords, justice, liberty, the armed forces and now Parliament itself. All have been poisoned and laid low by the most venal and incompetent government in UK history, a government, it must now be acknowledged, that was from the very start utterly dominated by corrupt Scottish Labour members with Brown always at the centre of the chaos they have generated everywhere.)

Meanwhile, the fallout is beginning to land in the real world. After Kitty Ussher's resignation yesterday for stealing £17,000 from us, calls from Vince Cable for a by election in her Burnley constituency will surely gain momentum. As the Grauniad goes on to say, another Labour crook, Jim Divine...

...the fifth Labour MP to be forced to stand down over his expenses claims, indicated he may force an early byelection after he was told by the party's disciplinary panel that his expenses claims disqualified him from standing for Labour again.

It seems from the direction this scandal now appears to be taking this summer could be remembered as the Summer of Elections. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cameron should take control of the situation, show some real steel, argue that since Brown has decided to abandon democracy in Britain altogether, he will order all his MPs to resign their seats and fight by elections, facing their constituents and standing on their records.

Such an unprecedented move, given Labour's utter corruptness and paralysis, would, probably, force the autumn general election we all now want. Even if it didn't, it would be the right thing to do and would defnitively demonstrate Cameron's ability to lead us out of this, the darkest of the dark periods in the history of our country. It would also reveal once and for all and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the man responsible for this darkness, James Gordon Brown, is totally unfit for the office that he stole.

The New Speaker?

Iain Dale thinks that there is an Ann Widdecombe bandwagon developing. The woman Quentin Letts said had a "voice [that] could admonish Lucifer himself and leave him wishing he had opted for a life of sanctity", Doris Karloff to the Left, might be the next speaker of the House of Commons on June 22nd.

After you overcome the initial sense of severe shock the suggestion seems to inspire, you kind of think, well, she might be ideal. She's standing down at the end of this parliament, she hasn't been mired in expenses sleaze and she certainly won't take any crap from anyone.

Given the surreal turn of recent events, this would at least be consistent, if nothing else.

Let's remind ourselves of that performance on HIGNFY a few years ago - and just change the venue, the personnel and the costume:



Weeeeell...

==Update==
She's just been interviewed on the Beeb and she's called for everyone to 'reflect'. I'll go and polish myself, then. Anyway, asked about the job of 'interim' Speaker - she didn't rule it out but I think she's with her party on this: an immediate general election so that there will be no 'interim period' and therefore no Ann Widdecombe Speaker.

Cameron kept his powder dry over this issue and let Brown and Clegg act as assassins. My guess: he has a bigger target on his mind (forcing that election by getting rid of Brown). Interesting times!

One Down...

The first Labour placeman will be gone before the day's out. Bets are being taken on who'll replace him with Frank Field the front runner. I think odds should be offered on who's next to go, not just on who will be the next speaker.

Dizzy speculates this is part of a Brown purge. I'm not convinced the feeble ditherer is in control of or strong enough in his party to that extent. My view: Cameron is in charge of the agenda. He was able to sit back and let Brown kill off one of his own allies without getting blood on his hands. But if Brown had not acted, Cameron would have, thus making Brown look even weaker. Either way, Brown has been severely - probably terminally - damaged by today's events.

Conclusion: this government is about to fall, folks. There will be an election this year. They should be taking bets on the date.

Or...Or...Or...Order

Just pathetic. This is the man who was going to call the police in to hunt the expenses mole and was bullying the only honest MPs in parliament only a few days ago. He's as morally bankrupt as he is ignorant.

He won't last the week.

Nuclear Options

So we've had the predictably useless speech (full transcript here), now it's time for Parliament to assert its authority. As Iain Dale says:

The Speaker displayed his won inability to do his job today. His lack of command of parliamentary procedure was self evident. Surely no one, not even the most tribal of Labour MPs, could deny that Mr Speaker signed his own political death warrant today.

Make no mistake, this motion will be debated one way or another. Parliament has got to reassert its own sovereign rights. The government must provide time for it to be debated, preferably for a full day.

If the Speaker's left wing Labour allies try to scupper this, and they have already started, then it will be time for David Cameron to step up to the plate and take the lead. Gordon Brown can't and won't because he's as tainted as his fellow clansman, Gorbals, so only the Tory leader possesses the authority and the quality to force Gorbals out. Iain Dale again, on what Cameron must say:

"I cannot stand idly by while the office is brought into serious disrepute. So I join with the Leader of the second opposition party and can announce this evening that the opposition will, at the earliest opportunity, use its next opposition day debate to debate a motion of confidence in the Speaker of the House of Commons."

If he doesn't get his way, there is a genuine 'nuclear' option: he must stand up in the house and personally confront the Speaker. If he is shut-up, he must say that he believes the house is unfit and that he resigns in protest. He must then look at all members and say "Who will follow?" just before he walks out of the chamber. All Tory MPs will go with him, preferably one by one (that's the plan!) and an awful lot of Liebour/Lib dimmies will too. Consequences: Speaker ousted, parliament dissolved, election forced, Brown skewered, Brown finished, Brown gone, power of parliament restored, new government.

Result.

Oh, Beautiful Storm

Today is the day when parliament fights back. The beauty within the scandalous, dirty, pathetic behaviour of our self-styled ruling classes is the glorious institution that, by chance, they inhabit but which, thanks to the rage of the people they represent, might just about be ready to reassert its authority - so that the hard road to enlightened reform finally, possibly can be taken.

The beauty is in the principle of the institution and in the civilised, lenient retribution its shabby abusers can almost certainly expect. The beauty, therefore, that can be found within this stinking scandal is in the highly moral, utterly informed reaction of the people - of us - which should leave even the most cynical British political refugee with a sense of new hope: free people are honest.

It should put the fear of God up the pocket-lining, hypocritical socialists. Free people - all people - don't have to put up with this kind of paternalist shit. Parliament belongs to us - and that better be bloody well recognised tomorrow. Especially by the Scots socialists.

I won't settle for anything else.

So. What must happen should be this: The Speaker will deliver his whining, baleful appeal, begging for understanding about why he simply had to conspire with certain (Labour) MPs to defraud the taxpayer. He'll slink and slide and blame and bluster, aware all the while that in the eyes of the British public, the people who can destroy MPs' careers in a heartbeat, he is the epicentre of the corruption that has brought the institution he swore to protect so desperately low, and brought our country into shameful, painful, international disrepute.

If he fails to utter the words 'I resign' in his speech, the storm that will break, and his subsequent, forced ousting, will signal the moment when the people of Britain begin to regain control of their own destiny. It will be remembered as the moment when politicians realised that their reliance on the good will of their constituents took absolute precedence over all other considerations, machinations, vanities and distractions. It'll be remembered as the beautiful storm that broke over the British parliament, consumed in its path a fair portion of the lawmakers and cleansed the rotten pestilence that is political careerism and abuse of office from its precincts. Preferably forever.

However, if that does not happen; if, tomorrow, we don't see a Speaker fall and a parliament contrite; if we merely see more backsliding and buckpassing, mendacity and sophism - more of the same - then the people in that House better be prepared for a very different kind of storm: the bubbling, brewing, angry, ugly storm of (I hope bloodless) revolution.

We've had enough, damn you.

So be bloody well warned, "honourable" members. We're ready to see action. You have one last chance to choose what kind of action it has to be. You fail, we move.

And I, for one, mean that.

Gorbals Speaks to the House - Sneak Preview!

It won't be his finest hour.

The Rage Of The Parliament Picts

Gorbals Mick: Crivens!

It's a question that has finally been answered conclusively; all the rumours, confirmed: the Speaker is as crazy and as Daft McBrown, our current "ard rí ".

We learn from today's Sunday Times that Gorbals Mick has blocked reform to the parliamentary expenses system at every turn, has lied about his involvement in the Damian Green scandal, and has flown into fits of rage whenever challenged about reform to the expenses system and whenever the question of his own troughing's been mentioned.

It's really worth quoting the Times' revelations about these outbreaks of Pict petulance:

1. Roadblock to reform:

THE expenses scandal is poised to claim its biggest victim as Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker held responsible for blocking reform, suffers a volley of damaging allegations this weekend...
In an interview with The Sunday Times, [John] Stonborough [Mick Martin's former media man] claimed that the Speaker had vetoed radical reform of the expenses system in a series of meetings...

He said the Speaker took control of the rules on expenses and allegedly personally edited the key 2004 edition of the Green Book on parliamentary allowances...The rules approved then are at the heart of the current scandal.

(So this is Labour's trough-system. Surprise surprise.)

2. Lies About the Green Affair:

Martin is facing questions after three senior law enforcement officials appeared to challenge his account of the botched police inquiry into Damian Green, the Tory MP...
After Scotland Yard detectives arrested Green and raided the MP’s Commons office last November, Martin told MPs he had not been informed in advance that the police had failed to get a search warrant. In a statement he appeared to blame his subordinate Jill Pay, the serjeant at arms, for not telling him the full facts. Speaking to The Sunday Times on condition that they were not identified, the three officials said they believed Martin had been told that the police did not have a warrant.

So Martin knew all along about the lack of a warrant. He lied to the House!

3. The Pict terror:

For the first time one of his former aides has broken ranks to speak out about his “reign of terror” that allegedly prevented officials from defusing the expenses crisis...in a series of meetings [Martin] exploded with rage when challenged about his own second home allowance claims. In 2003, [for instance], Martin lost his temper at the suggestion that his decision to claim a second home allowance on his house in Glasgow while living in a grace and favour home in Westminster did not “look good”. “He reacted extremely violently,” said Stonborough, who added that Commons officials were too scared to question his decisions.

So now we begin to see the real picture of life behind the scenes in parliament during the Labour years - and boy, it's an ugly one! A cabal of powerful left-wing Scottish political thugs infiltrated every aspect of parliamentary life - every high office, every department, every watchdog and every committee - and then proceeded to create a system of expenses that they could all milk until the cash cow was udderly dry. With a deep sense of their own, elitist entitlement, unheard of since the days of the court of le Roi Soleil, they fought tooth and nail throughout to preserve the status quo they had created whereby they could syphon off money from the public reservoir into their own burgeoning bank accounts every day of every week in a wide variety of imaginative ways.

(One might even be tempted to speculate that McBroon encouraged the housing bubble to inflate beyond all control - and all sanity - in order to allow his clan's profiteering to carry on and on, regardless of the desperate catastrophe for the UK economy caused by the inevitable, titanic bust. An "I'm all right, Jock," attitude, then, so to speak.)

Clearly the chief gangster, of course, is not Gorbals, vile though he indubitably is. Oh no. It's most certainly Gordon the Broon. Thankfully, the head of the clan is about to receive a right royal flea in his shell-like from Her Maj. Wonder if he'll explode in a fit of spiteful Scots rage in that meeting, too. What price to be a fly on that wall (so long as you're not squashed by a flying Nokia)!

And just for good measure, here's how another of the Stoneage Pict ruling tribe reacted upon hearing that his kith was about to be sent packing:

Lord Foulkes, the Labour peer, said Martin had “no intention of bowing to pressure this side of the next election”.

“It seems that some MPs are looking for a scapegoat in the Speaker and, mistakenly, think his departure would take the pressure off them,” he said. “It is not going to happen."

Unbelievable. How wrong you are, comrade, how wrong you are. The party's over, mate. You're all finished. Thank God.