•
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, confirmed the policy reversal for those with four years’service in a Commons statement following an intense three year campaign, led by Joanna Lumley, the actress.
The victory brings to an end more than 20 years of demands to give Gurkha veterans equal rights and has left Gordon Brown and his ministers embarrassed after misjudging the public mood.
That’s all that anyone was ever asking. That those who serve in the British Army in the Gurkha regiments get treated the same as other foreigners who serve in other regiments in the British Army.
The question is, why was the Government so blitheringly incompetent in realising that this was the right thing to do?
•
It´s one of the slightly cynical observations about politics and politicians. That a politician will trade away long term paid in return for a short term gain.
Of course, this isn´t good for the rest of us but it does no end of good for the politician´s ego and career. Looks like we*ve got one of those moments just coming up:
Gordon Brown will diminish Britain’s international role in global financial institutions by increasing European Union representation, as the price for an agreement at the G20 summit.
Brown is simply desperate to make sure that there´s an agreement at this summit. Doesn´t really matter what the agreement is (to continue being cynical), just that there is one that he can trumpet as being his initiative to save the world.
And if the price of that is that we lose yet more of our independence in hte international institutions, well, from Brown´s point of view, so what?
He´s not going to be dealing with that loss of influence in the decades to come, is he?
•
THE WHIP is contacted by a source who works for the company involved in the G20 Summit being held at Excel in London’s Canning Town next month.
�Although smoking is banned within work places in the UK and has been a vigorously enforced Labour policy, it is being allowed at the G20 summit – indeed, there is a smoking lounge,� he reports.
And I get an email explaining a little more:
The smoking ban legislation in force since 1 July 2007 in England is being amended for the G20 Summit being held in April at the Excel Exhibition Centre in Docklands, London.
It has been revealed that smoking rooms will be allowed at the venue.
I cannot explain my feelings about this sort of thing in language polite enough to use on a blog like this.
There’s one law for the rulers and another for the ruled. The politicians aren’t being held to the same rules and regulations as the rest of us. I’m sorry, but this sort of contempt for us, the people, by those who set themselves up over us has me boiling with rage.
I’m afraid you’ll have to imagine the language I’d like to use to describe this.
•
One of the things that makes politics such a great spectator sport is watching as people stick the boot in to one politician or another. It’s even more enjoyable when it’s someone as annoying as Harriet Harman on the receiving end.
GAFFE-PRONE Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, derided for trying to snatch back Sir Fred Goodwin’s retirement package, has been branded a “hypocrite” after it emerged she is sitting on a taxpayer funded pension pot of £1.5million.
….the Leader of the House of Commons has amassed a small fortune in pension rights during her 27-year stint in Westminster, allowing her to retire next year with an annual pension of £50,000…….It means that Labour’s so-called “golden couple” are likely to rake in a joint retirement income of about £100,000 a year……Lord Matthew Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrats’ pensions spokesman who calculated Ms Harman’s retirement package for the Sunday Express, said: “She should accept the verdict of the court of public opinion and look at her own unaffordable fat cat pension pot. She will be a hypocrite if she doesn’t.”
Wonderful to watch, isn’t it?