Muhammad Haque
2300 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 28 January 2009
What does it say about Brown's claim to original thought when he jumped on the Crossrail bandwagon within weeks of getting into No 10 Downing Street?
If he had not known about the fabricating career of Ken Livingstone before April 2008, he can not pretend to be unaware now, nine months after Livingstone admitted to having lied on the 2012 Games Hosting Bid.
Livingstone made the admission, no, bragged of having lied, in the 'Mayoral Election Special' edition of Question Time on BBC1 in April 2008. Just so that there was no doubt about what Livingstone had meant, Question Time presenter David Dimbleby asked him to clarify.
Livingstone had no hesitation about ding so.
He went on to say that lying had been the only way to persuade the UK Govt to spend so much money on the construction of the 2012 Games hosting site located in a part of the East End of London.
The question is: has anyone ever come across a single member of the ordinary population in the East End of London with the requisite knowledge and freedom to objectively think about the whole matter, to say that to them, that would really 'regenerate' the East End?
Likewise, when Brown appeared, TWICE, on platforms with CANDIDATE Ken Livingstone and sang endlessly in praise of Crossrail, he did not let on that the scan was being propelled through the UK Houses of Parliament by an ex aide of former Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander.
This anti-democratic and unconstitutional and sleazy relationship was belatedly [that is, after the 'CrossRail Bill' was rubber stamped into the 'Crossrail Act' in July 2008] recorded in PRIVATE EYE.
The two 'projects', gloried now as 'infrastructure projects. between them will cost the UK public more than the sum the IFS report being commented on today [Wednesday 28 January 2009] has suggested would be added to the burden of debt...
If Brown could not see EITHER scam for what it was, how can he carry on claiming to be 'serious' [as different from the 'novices' that he was choreographed into 'dismissing' when he was introduced to the media via the Blaired Party jamboree by his own wife in September 2008]?
The other side of the same question is: Has Cameron got really comprehensive answers and alternatives and does he have the demonstrable integrity to call upon the people to ‘trust’ his ‘leadership’?
---------------------------
33rd year AADHIKAR
0225 GMT Thursday 06 June 2013
AADHIKAR Media Foundation Editor © Muhammad Haque
Founding News Editor
Shah M Azizul Haque
AADHIKAR Media Foundation established with the publication of AADHIKAR the weekly on Monday 19 December 1980 from London E1 UK.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
KHOODEELAAR! Question for Brown and Darling; Where in the IMF, IFS reports is there ANY indication that you should waste £ BIllions for Crossrail?
2100 GMT WEdnesday 28 January 2009
KHOODEELAAR! Question for Brown and Darling:
Where in the IMF, IFS reports is there ANY indication that you should waste £ BIllions for Crossrail?
KHOODEELAAR! Question for Brown and Darling:
Where in the IMF, IFS reports is there ANY indication that you should waste £ BIllions for Crossrail?
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! And even the ITV News admits that Brown and Darling have gone OTT in faking it!
This item is linked to he BBC web site that includes a video of the PMQs
The question is: How long will the official Opposition in the UK take before asking Brown to scrap Crossrail?
[To be continued]
The question is: How long will the official Opposition in the UK take before asking Brown to scrap Crossrail?
[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Now EVEN D Cameron uses the word and the concept 'CRASS' to describe Brown's debts-creating decisions!
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Now EVEN D Cameron uses the word and the concept 'CRASS' to describe Brown's debts-creating decisions!
It happened at todays' staged PMQs in the UK House of Commons [held at 1202 Hrs GMT Wednesday 28 january 2009].
Khoodeelaar! research unit observed the live broadcast as it happened.
However, we waited to see how the ‘mainstream' media would treat the occurrence of CRASS in D Cameron's denunciation of Brown’s debts-creating economic 'behaviour'.
This commentary is linked to a Channel 4 News item on the Channel’s web site that does feature the CRASS word...
KHOODEELAAR! first used the word ‘CRASS’ in relation to Crossrail scam in 2004.
It was only in late 2008 that the German finance minister described Brown’s ‘economic policies’ as CRASS Keyenesianism...
[To be continued]
It happened at todays' staged PMQs in the UK House of Commons [held at 1202 Hrs GMT Wednesday 28 january 2009].
Khoodeelaar! research unit observed the live broadcast as it happened.
However, we waited to see how the ‘mainstream' media would treat the occurrence of CRASS in D Cameron's denunciation of Brown’s debts-creating economic 'behaviour'.
This commentary is linked to a Channel 4 News item on the Channel’s web site that does feature the CRASS word...
KHOODEELAAR! first used the word ‘CRASS’ in relation to Crossrail scam in 2004.
It was only in late 2008 that the German finance minister described Brown’s ‘economic policies’ as CRASS Keyenesianism...
[To be continued]
CRASS boast by CRASSrail-backer EVENING STANDARD about safe stations conceals the paper's CRASSrail role
From the web site: thisislondon.co.uk [that carries the STANDARD;s nostandards pieces]
Battle lines drawn to keep ticket offices open closure
Dick Murray, Transport Editor
28.01.09
Related Articles
Cuts would be ‘short-sighted’
POLITICIANS and union leaders today urged rail commuters to back the Evening Standard's campaign for safer stations.
London Assembly members joined rail union chiefs at King's Cross station to protest against plans by First Capital Connect to reduce opening hours at 43 ticket offices on its Thameslink route.
Critics of the money-saving scheme say it will mean stations will be left for longer without any staff, particularly late at night and at weekends.
The Standard's Safer Stations campaign was launched in 2006 after the murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce as he left the unmanned station at Kensal Green. Surveys have shown passengers want more staff at stations, not fewer.
Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the TSSA transport union, said: “It is vitally important that passengers make their voices heard on FCC's unacceptable plans to make cuts at 43 ticket offices on some of London's busiest commuter lines. If they back us and the Standard's Safer Stations campaign we can win this fight.”
He added: “A manned station is a safer station and passengers can buy cheaper tickets at booking offices rather than at ticket machines.”
Assembly members Joanne McCartney, Enfield and Haringey, and Valerie Shawcross, Lambeth and Southwark, joined Mr Doherty and RMT union leader Bob Crow in urging passengers to join the protest.
Enfield North MP Joan Ryan has tabled a Commons motion saying the cuts, which would affect 22 constituencies, would threaten passenger security and urging First Capital to drop the plans.
Mr Crow condemned the cuts as “an attack on passenger service and safety and an attack on our members' jobs at the worst possible time. It beggars belief that FCC can propose removing more staff from stations when four of them, Alexandra Palace, New Southgate, Oakleigh Park and New Barnet, are deemed by the Mayor of London to need regular police patrols to improve safety.”
Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon this month largely rejected plans by South West Trains to cut hours at 114 ticket offices after widespread public protest. Passengers have until next Tuesday to lodge their objections with London TravelWatch or Passenger Focus.
Other stations affected include Elephant & Castle, Haringey, Hornsey, Luton Airport Parkway, New Southgate, Stevenage and Tooting.
Link to:
Reader Views (7) Add your view | Show all
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
The scroats that hang arouns stations and bus depo's don't worry about getting told off.
- John, Wapping
Ticket Offices should be turned into all night diners and shops.
- Dhanraj, Basildon Essex
As a female someone sitting in a booking office does act as some reassurance. If it's manned then people who aren't getting trains are less likely to hang around for fear of getting told off. Additionally should you need to get to someone to help you you stand more chance if it's manned. A dark quiet station with no staff, away from shops / pub / open places is not a nice place to be!
- Victoria, London"
KHOODEELAAR! will comment on this further
Battle lines drawn to keep ticket offices open closure
Dick Murray, Transport Editor
28.01.09
Related Articles
Cuts would be ‘short-sighted’
POLITICIANS and union leaders today urged rail commuters to back the Evening Standard's campaign for safer stations.
London Assembly members joined rail union chiefs at King's Cross station to protest against plans by First Capital Connect to reduce opening hours at 43 ticket offices on its Thameslink route.
Critics of the money-saving scheme say it will mean stations will be left for longer without any staff, particularly late at night and at weekends.
The Standard's Safer Stations campaign was launched in 2006 after the murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce as he left the unmanned station at Kensal Green. Surveys have shown passengers want more staff at stations, not fewer.
Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the TSSA transport union, said: “It is vitally important that passengers make their voices heard on FCC's unacceptable plans to make cuts at 43 ticket offices on some of London's busiest commuter lines. If they back us and the Standard's Safer Stations campaign we can win this fight.”
He added: “A manned station is a safer station and passengers can buy cheaper tickets at booking offices rather than at ticket machines.”
Assembly members Joanne McCartney, Enfield and Haringey, and Valerie Shawcross, Lambeth and Southwark, joined Mr Doherty and RMT union leader Bob Crow in urging passengers to join the protest.
Enfield North MP Joan Ryan has tabled a Commons motion saying the cuts, which would affect 22 constituencies, would threaten passenger security and urging First Capital to drop the plans.
Mr Crow condemned the cuts as “an attack on passenger service and safety and an attack on our members' jobs at the worst possible time. It beggars belief that FCC can propose removing more staff from stations when four of them, Alexandra Palace, New Southgate, Oakleigh Park and New Barnet, are deemed by the Mayor of London to need regular police patrols to improve safety.”
Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon this month largely rejected plans by South West Trains to cut hours at 114 ticket offices after widespread public protest. Passengers have until next Tuesday to lodge their objections with London TravelWatch or Passenger Focus.
Other stations affected include Elephant & Castle, Haringey, Hornsey, Luton Airport Parkway, New Southgate, Stevenage and Tooting.
Link to:
Reader Views (7) Add your view | Show all
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
The scroats that hang arouns stations and bus depo's don't worry about getting told off.
- John, Wapping
Ticket Offices should be turned into all night diners and shops.
- Dhanraj, Basildon Essex
As a female someone sitting in a booking office does act as some reassurance. If it's manned then people who aren't getting trains are less likely to hang around for fear of getting told off. Additionally should you need to get to someone to help you you stand more chance if it's manned. A dark quiet station with no staff, away from shops / pub / open places is not a nice place to be!
- Victoria, London"
KHOODEELAAR! will comment on this further
CRASS talk and crasser words by CRASSrail-peddling John Biggs and Boris Johnson: they are BOTH illogical. SCRAP Crossrail
From the website : thisislondon.co.uk
BORIS JOHNSON was today forced to defend Tube and bus fare rises which could see Londoners pay an extra £300 a year.
The new prices which came into effect this month have seen peak Oyster card fares for trips within Zones 1 and 2 rise from £2 to £2.20.
The Mayor was facing questions from members of the London Assembly over his first draft budget which includes a freeze of the Greater London Authority's share of the council tax.
But opposition members said this amounted to a saving of £9 a year - compared with a travel card increase of between £160 and £300.
Mr Johnson, who has promised to cut the GLA's £12billion budget in 2009/10 by £9.1million, said the financial position of Transport for London made the rises inevitable. He said: "They were put in place by the last mayor and abandoned in the run-up to the elections."
Labour's budget spokesman John Biggs said: "Holding tax down with one hand and snatching fares with the other does not represent value for money for working Londoners."
Link to:
Reader Views (0) Add your view
No comments have so far been submitted.
Add your comment
Name:
BORIS JOHNSON was today forced to defend Tube and bus fare rises which could see Londoners pay an extra £300 a year.
The new prices which came into effect this month have seen peak Oyster card fares for trips within Zones 1 and 2 rise from £2 to £2.20.
The Mayor was facing questions from members of the London Assembly over his first draft budget which includes a freeze of the Greater London Authority's share of the council tax.
But opposition members said this amounted to a saving of £9 a year - compared with a travel card increase of between £160 and £300.
Mr Johnson, who has promised to cut the GLA's £12billion budget in 2009/10 by £9.1million, said the financial position of Transport for London made the rises inevitable. He said: "They were put in place by the last mayor and abandoned in the run-up to the elections."
Labour's budget spokesman John Biggs said: "Holding tax down with one hand and snatching fares with the other does not represent value for money for working Londoners."
Link to:
Reader Views (0) Add your view
No comments have so far been submitted.
Add your comment
Name:
CROSSRAIL CAUSING CONGESTION IN CENTRAL LONDON!!!!
CRASS behaviour by Crossrail-peddlers in central London councils: messing up freight transport in London
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2009/01/28/132878/crossrail-works-congestion-for-the-next-nine-years.html
"Crossrail works: congestion for the next nine years?
28 January 2009
Transport operators delivering to central London will face disruption for the next nine years now that the first stages of construction work for the £15.9bn Crossrail project (due for completion in 2017) have started - without apparent reference to the work's impact on the movement of freight into and out of the capital.
While the main construction work on the east-west cross-London line starts in 2010, the Crossrail development team (in tandem with Transport for London, the London Borough of Camden and Westminster City Council) has enacted bus diversions for up to seven years on Tottenham Court Road to allow the Tube station to undergo £1bn of redevelopment - work that started earlier this month.
Plans for the management and movement of project-related construction traffic are in hand, with further Crossrail-specific logistics to be planned by DHL.
But as FTA director of policy James Hookham attests, those who carry freight in and out of London every day have not been consulted. "They [Crossrail and TfL] had thought through arrangements for buses and taxis - but not freight. It's early enough in the process to achieve a solution."
Traffic management changes could also lead to an increase in penalty charge notices. "As kerb space is denied, operators could be forced into streets where access is restricted," says Hookham. "The ideal [solution] is temporary [loading] bays or the relaxing of unloading restrictions."
The FTA has invited TfL to set up an enquiry point (operating through the FTA's member advice centre) to handle operators' questions. "We need a one-stop-shop with up-to-date information," Hookham says.
A Crossrail spokeswoman says: "The traffic management for each stage of the works will be discussed at regular meetings with the local highway authorities. Where major diversions are required, Crossrail will take advice from the local highway authority on the companies to be informed, including freight operators.
"
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2009/01/28/132878/crossrail-works-congestion-for-the-next-nine-years.html
"Crossrail works: congestion for the next nine years?
28 January 2009
Transport operators delivering to central London will face disruption for the next nine years now that the first stages of construction work for the £15.9bn Crossrail project (due for completion in 2017) have started - without apparent reference to the work's impact on the movement of freight into and out of the capital.
While the main construction work on the east-west cross-London line starts in 2010, the Crossrail development team (in tandem with Transport for London, the London Borough of Camden and Westminster City Council) has enacted bus diversions for up to seven years on Tottenham Court Road to allow the Tube station to undergo £1bn of redevelopment - work that started earlier this month.
Plans for the management and movement of project-related construction traffic are in hand, with further Crossrail-specific logistics to be planned by DHL.
But as FTA director of policy James Hookham attests, those who carry freight in and out of London every day have not been consulted. "They [Crossrail and TfL] had thought through arrangements for buses and taxis - but not freight. It's early enough in the process to achieve a solution."
Traffic management changes could also lead to an increase in penalty charge notices. "As kerb space is denied, operators could be forced into streets where access is restricted," says Hookham. "The ideal [solution] is temporary [loading] bays or the relaxing of unloading restrictions."
The FTA has invited TfL to set up an enquiry point (operating through the FTA's member advice centre) to handle operators' questions. "We need a one-stop-shop with up-to-date information," Hookham says.
A Crossrail spokeswoman says: "The traffic management for each stage of the works will be discussed at regular meetings with the local highway authorities. Where major diversions are required, Crossrail will take advice from the local highway authority on the companies to be informed, including freight operators.
"
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Rejecting London EVENING Nostandards STANDARD's pretentious Anne McElvoy opining on the sleaze-ball Peers
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!
Rejecting London EVENING Nostandards STANDARD's pretentious Anne McElvoy opining on the sleaze-ball Peers
Why is KHOODEELAAR! doing so?
For a start, the RECORD of Anne McElvoy is itself dubious. to say the least.
SHE is evidentially and intellectually sloppy, and imitates other people more often than her ‘newspaper’ column appears
Secondly, the 'newspaper' that she [McElvoy] has been editing as executive editor to Veronica Wadley as editor has a disgraceful record of lying.
Anne McElvoy is not entitled to pretend to be better than the sleaze ball Peers. While THEY [those peers] have been caught with their fingers in the notional till, she has been blatantly suppressing the truth for years..
We shall highlight some key moments of the EVENING Nostandards STANDARD's lies and lying as against the East End of London in the past relevant years...
[To be continued]
"
Lords-a-lobbying spell double trouble for Labour
Anne McElvoy
28.01.09
LORDS a lobbying don't make a pretty sight, do they? The bottom of the Labour barrel has been scraped with this lot. Lord Taylor positively exudes mediocrity - except for his income, obviously. Here is the payroll pensioner vote in action.
Whining about "entrapment" is a poor substitute for having the sense not to get into a trap fed by greed in the first place. Scandals have a habit of producing memorable phrases and "within my own conscience, I have followed the rules" from Lord Taylor is an absolute classic of delusion. This is the man who boasted he could earn £100,000 lobbying for a change in the law for his clients.
"Dear God," said one (very upright) Labour peer to me yesterday, "if I wanted all that favour trading and brass-raking, I'd just go down to the Commons."
The Lords is always an anomaly, one way or the other. It survives the various alterations because it is an institution people hold in high regard and because it holds the Government to firmer account than the Commons. Party lines are less binding and dissenters can't be sacked or downgraded.
If it's the best debates on Iraq or Afghanistan, on Trident or security and liberty you want, skip the Commons and head next door, where the chances of a knowledgeable treatment of what's at stake and a civilised exchange of views are far higher.
So the sense of shock is all the greater: no fewer than four peers appear to have been willing to help someone posing as a businessman seeking favours. The reasonable conclusion is that some members of the Lords can be bought if the price is right.
That might be shocking but it is an unacknowledged consequence of the way that legislative power has shifted. Laws are now so badly and quickly drafted in the Commons, and a party line agreed by the Whips, that most of the work on making them applicable happens next door. Lobbyists and those with interests in amending draft laws have learned to follow suit.
Both the Lords and Commons are governed by a code of conduct which is clear in such matters - members may consult and advise outside companies or individuals but they may not offer to exert influence in return, nor take payment for questions or votes.
What the Lords does not really have is a Standards Commissioner with the powers vested in the Commons equivalent - a useful by-product of the Major era sleaze rows, who can dole out punishment when there is a lapse or a misuse of position and is genuinely feared by MPs.
The talk this week was of the Lords in the Sunday Times sting being removed from the House "for a period of time" - which hardly sounds like a draconian response, if there turns out to have been real wrongdoing.
A broader question is what sort of upper house we want - one that has been by turns fudged and ignored because the Government cannot reach agreement in its own ranks on the preferred composition and nature of the second chamber, never mind getting agreement from anyone else.
The justice minister Jack Straw, who used to be a keen constitutional tinkerer (he, too, finds himself drawn into this mess as the recipient of donations from Lord Taylor) suggested to me not so long ago that changing the Lords was now a dormant issue, destined to be addressed in another distant, and possibly non-Labour, era.
Gordon Brown was theoretically keen on constitutional changes in the upper house, as the kind of nuts and bolts reform the intellectual end of Labour is often fond of. But he soon changed his priorities when the economic winds grew chill.
The second chamber has become a very useful vehicle for propelling those civilians he wished to appoint into senior jobs straight into the executive. So step forward Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool, Baroness Vadera and Lord Myners, the new and powerful banking minister to beef up his recession-fighting team.
Broadly, I am with Mr Brown on this one. The talent pool of the Commons is limited and it makes sense to deploy the experience and depth the Lords offers on international affairs, business and the law.
Anyway, Lords-a-ministering aren't new: Margaret Thatcher had Lord Carrington as foreign secretary and, more influentially, Lord Young of Graffham, a tough trade minister not unlike Lord Mandelson in his reach and desire to dominate the agenda (and colleagues).
However, we live now in a climate of greater distrust of politicians - who have largely brought it on themselves. There must therefore be more formal accountability of these ministers, who at present need not face questions in the Commons and are shadowed more discreetly in the Lords than in the rough and tumble of the lower chamber.
The political fallout isn't hard to assess. This is a story with only one party in the line of fire: Labour, at a time when the major obstacle to its re-election hopes is that it appears tired and complacent in office.
So Mr Brown wakes up to that age-old, migraine-inducing combination of downward-slaloming polls and a juicy sleaze row with his party's name on it.
His second honeymoon has just passed - celebrated too early by those of his admirers who were keen to mark a Lazarus resurrection. A close aide admitted to me last week that for the first time, the focus groups showed him lagging among male voters, who had previously been his main supporters. "They feel more personally aggrieved by unemployment or the threat of it," he says.
Labour insiders ascribe the sudden slump in the polls to an angrier mood in the electorate - something David Cameron is seeking to reflect in his more tub-thumping tone this year.
Where the Lords plays into all this is in the sense that a class of politicians is insulated from the hardships of the public and more concerned with their own comfort and preferment than their role in the political process.
Lord Wallace raises a solid point in a letter to this paper today, when he says that the Lords has more expertise and knowledge of legislation - and is thus, naturally enough, consulted by those who have an interest in new laws and their amendment. There will always be a fine line to draw on how that should be done without crossing the line into the sale of political influence, and it is not an easy one to define in a failsafe way. But now it will have to be attempted with new vigour, if the credibility of the second chamber is not to founder.
The dreadful shame of this is that the Lords is an asset to Britain's democracy. But it doesn't look like that today. It looks like a place where some of those who have been elevated for their supposed service and wisdom can act as Arthur Daleys flogging the laws as if they owned them. Not much honour in that.
"
Rejecting London EVENING Nostandards STANDARD's pretentious Anne McElvoy opining on the sleaze-ball Peers
Why is KHOODEELAAR! doing so?
For a start, the RECORD of Anne McElvoy is itself dubious. to say the least.
SHE is evidentially and intellectually sloppy, and imitates other people more often than her ‘newspaper’ column appears
Secondly, the 'newspaper' that she [McElvoy] has been editing as executive editor to Veronica Wadley as editor has a disgraceful record of lying.
Anne McElvoy is not entitled to pretend to be better than the sleaze ball Peers. While THEY [those peers] have been caught with their fingers in the notional till, she has been blatantly suppressing the truth for years..
We shall highlight some key moments of the EVENING Nostandards STANDARD's lies and lying as against the East End of London in the past relevant years...
[To be continued]
"
Lords-a-lobbying spell double trouble for Labour
Anne McElvoy
28.01.09
LORDS a lobbying don't make a pretty sight, do they? The bottom of the Labour barrel has been scraped with this lot. Lord Taylor positively exudes mediocrity - except for his income, obviously. Here is the payroll pensioner vote in action.
Whining about "entrapment" is a poor substitute for having the sense not to get into a trap fed by greed in the first place. Scandals have a habit of producing memorable phrases and "within my own conscience, I have followed the rules" from Lord Taylor is an absolute classic of delusion. This is the man who boasted he could earn £100,000 lobbying for a change in the law for his clients.
"Dear God," said one (very upright) Labour peer to me yesterday, "if I wanted all that favour trading and brass-raking, I'd just go down to the Commons."
The Lords is always an anomaly, one way or the other. It survives the various alterations because it is an institution people hold in high regard and because it holds the Government to firmer account than the Commons. Party lines are less binding and dissenters can't be sacked or downgraded.
If it's the best debates on Iraq or Afghanistan, on Trident or security and liberty you want, skip the Commons and head next door, where the chances of a knowledgeable treatment of what's at stake and a civilised exchange of views are far higher.
So the sense of shock is all the greater: no fewer than four peers appear to have been willing to help someone posing as a businessman seeking favours. The reasonable conclusion is that some members of the Lords can be bought if the price is right.
That might be shocking but it is an unacknowledged consequence of the way that legislative power has shifted. Laws are now so badly and quickly drafted in the Commons, and a party line agreed by the Whips, that most of the work on making them applicable happens next door. Lobbyists and those with interests in amending draft laws have learned to follow suit.
Both the Lords and Commons are governed by a code of conduct which is clear in such matters - members may consult and advise outside companies or individuals but they may not offer to exert influence in return, nor take payment for questions or votes.
What the Lords does not really have is a Standards Commissioner with the powers vested in the Commons equivalent - a useful by-product of the Major era sleaze rows, who can dole out punishment when there is a lapse or a misuse of position and is genuinely feared by MPs.
The talk this week was of the Lords in the Sunday Times sting being removed from the House "for a period of time" - which hardly sounds like a draconian response, if there turns out to have been real wrongdoing.
A broader question is what sort of upper house we want - one that has been by turns fudged and ignored because the Government cannot reach agreement in its own ranks on the preferred composition and nature of the second chamber, never mind getting agreement from anyone else.
The justice minister Jack Straw, who used to be a keen constitutional tinkerer (he, too, finds himself drawn into this mess as the recipient of donations from Lord Taylor) suggested to me not so long ago that changing the Lords was now a dormant issue, destined to be addressed in another distant, and possibly non-Labour, era.
Gordon Brown was theoretically keen on constitutional changes in the upper house, as the kind of nuts and bolts reform the intellectual end of Labour is often fond of. But he soon changed his priorities when the economic winds grew chill.
The second chamber has become a very useful vehicle for propelling those civilians he wished to appoint into senior jobs straight into the executive. So step forward Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool, Baroness Vadera and Lord Myners, the new and powerful banking minister to beef up his recession-fighting team.
Broadly, I am with Mr Brown on this one. The talent pool of the Commons is limited and it makes sense to deploy the experience and depth the Lords offers on international affairs, business and the law.
Anyway, Lords-a-ministering aren't new: Margaret Thatcher had Lord Carrington as foreign secretary and, more influentially, Lord Young of Graffham, a tough trade minister not unlike Lord Mandelson in his reach and desire to dominate the agenda (and colleagues).
However, we live now in a climate of greater distrust of politicians - who have largely brought it on themselves. There must therefore be more formal accountability of these ministers, who at present need not face questions in the Commons and are shadowed more discreetly in the Lords than in the rough and tumble of the lower chamber.
The political fallout isn't hard to assess. This is a story with only one party in the line of fire: Labour, at a time when the major obstacle to its re-election hopes is that it appears tired and complacent in office.
So Mr Brown wakes up to that age-old, migraine-inducing combination of downward-slaloming polls and a juicy sleaze row with his party's name on it.
His second honeymoon has just passed - celebrated too early by those of his admirers who were keen to mark a Lazarus resurrection. A close aide admitted to me last week that for the first time, the focus groups showed him lagging among male voters, who had previously been his main supporters. "They feel more personally aggrieved by unemployment or the threat of it," he says.
Labour insiders ascribe the sudden slump in the polls to an angrier mood in the electorate - something David Cameron is seeking to reflect in his more tub-thumping tone this year.
Where the Lords plays into all this is in the sense that a class of politicians is insulated from the hardships of the public and more concerned with their own comfort and preferment than their role in the political process.
Lord Wallace raises a solid point in a letter to this paper today, when he says that the Lords has more expertise and knowledge of legislation - and is thus, naturally enough, consulted by those who have an interest in new laws and their amendment. There will always be a fine line to draw on how that should be done without crossing the line into the sale of political influence, and it is not an easy one to define in a failsafe way. But now it will have to be attempted with new vigour, if the credibility of the second chamber is not to founder.
The dreadful shame of this is that the Lords is an asset to Britain's democracy. But it doesn't look like that today. It looks like a place where some of those who have been elevated for their supposed service and wisdom can act as Arthur Daleys flogging the laws as if they owned them. Not much honour in that.
"
KHOODEELAAR! challenging UK House of Peers 'leader' 'Baroness Royall' to justify her suggestion that she knows what goes on in the DISCREDITED House
0900 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 January 2009
Months before the actual sitting of the hocus pocus 'Select Committee' cobbled together to give an impression that they were following procedures, KHOODEELAAR! The campaign against the Crossrail Bill contacted the 'officials' in the UK House of Lords'.
The officials said that the 'Crossrail Bill' 'Select Committee' organisations had yet to be established in the 'Upper Chamfer' and that the staff were still at work on the details. They said they would let us know once the preparations were completed.
We allowed them time to do so before we made contacts again.
In the mean time, as we were waiting for the 'House of Lords' officials to get ready for the 'CrossRail Bill', we wrote and published a number of comments on the internet. Including on the Times, London, web site.
We set out the constitutional and the democratic duties of the UK House of Lords.
And in particular we also focussed attention on the then just published examples of idiocies by one of the CRASS role playing 'ministers' [an MP] in the Crossrail-peddling UK Department for Transport. Tom Harris.
Harris has since left 'the Govt'..
As we had warned that he would do. As we had observed that he SHOULD do. We had on the evidence of his utterances concluded that Harris was behaving in a typically crass, unconstitutional way.
This set of activities by KHOODEELAAR! in seeking to draw attention to the constitutional law role of the ‘Upper House’ was way away from the realities of the ‘House of Peers’ itself. While we gave them a deliberately extended scope to prove that they were worthy of respect, THEY could not be further from that standard.
While we argued for the ‘House of Peers’ to be given the freedom to do what we said was the prime the main duty, the main job of the UK House of 'Lords' [=PEERS], THE HOUSE ITSELF was unwilling to uphold that dignified status we were giving them.
So when ‘Baroness’ {What a worryingly unjustified, unconstitutional and pompous word that is] Royall [!!!] uttered on Monday 26 January 2009 that she was aware that the ‘House’ had been discredited throughout the world by the revelations about the four named ‘peers’, she could not have been more clueless.
If she was telling the truth that is.
Assuming that SHE at least was telling the truth, she should not be ‘leader’ of that House at all.
[To be continued]
Months before the actual sitting of the hocus pocus 'Select Committee' cobbled together to give an impression that they were following procedures, KHOODEELAAR! The campaign against the Crossrail Bill contacted the 'officials' in the UK House of Lords'.
The officials said that the 'Crossrail Bill' 'Select Committee' organisations had yet to be established in the 'Upper Chamfer' and that the staff were still at work on the details. They said they would let us know once the preparations were completed.
We allowed them time to do so before we made contacts again.
In the mean time, as we were waiting for the 'House of Lords' officials to get ready for the 'CrossRail Bill', we wrote and published a number of comments on the internet. Including on the Times, London, web site.
We set out the constitutional and the democratic duties of the UK House of Lords.
And in particular we also focussed attention on the then just published examples of idiocies by one of the CRASS role playing 'ministers' [an MP] in the Crossrail-peddling UK Department for Transport. Tom Harris.
Harris has since left 'the Govt'..
As we had warned that he would do. As we had observed that he SHOULD do. We had on the evidence of his utterances concluded that Harris was behaving in a typically crass, unconstitutional way.
This set of activities by KHOODEELAAR! in seeking to draw attention to the constitutional law role of the ‘Upper House’ was way away from the realities of the ‘House of Peers’ itself. While we gave them a deliberately extended scope to prove that they were worthy of respect, THEY could not be further from that standard.
While we argued for the ‘House of Peers’ to be given the freedom to do what we said was the prime the main duty, the main job of the UK House of 'Lords' [=PEERS], THE HOUSE ITSELF was unwilling to uphold that dignified status we were giving them.
So when ‘Baroness’ {What a worryingly unjustified, unconstitutional and pompous word that is] Royall [!!!] uttered on Monday 26 January 2009 that she was aware that the ‘House’ had been discredited throughout the world by the revelations about the four named ‘peers’, she could not have been more clueless.
If she was telling the truth that is.
Assuming that SHE at least was telling the truth, she should not be ‘leader’ of that House at all.
[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! continuing to update evidence of our own finding of the stooge role by UK 'House of Peers' [='lords']
0700 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 January 2008:
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU So. As we are also telling the Times online this morning.,. It was of course the Times newspaper group ['Sunday Times' title] that carried out the particular investigation into the particular 4 peers....
This morning [Wednesday 28 January 2009], KHOODEELAAR! No to CrossRail hole scam CAMPAIGN organiser has told the Times online this:
"Nothing that any of the 'mainstream' Parties has so far said about what THEY would do to end abuse of Parliament by members amounts to much. They have said things mostly to 'reassure'. Parliament in the UK is at its core complicit with the executive. Parliament is a collective poodle.
A stooged extension."
This observation is the latest formulation of the analysis that Khoodeelaar! has been making for years now… Based on the evidence of their conduct, the two Houses of the UK Parliament behave as stooges… They do not hold the executive top account.
And they will not do so in the foreseeable future…
And today’s Question Time or the scheduled Question Time in the UK House of Commons is not expected to reveal anything constitutionally or morally or structurally so new, so real, so original, so honest as to make either House become a genuine vehicle for democratic representation and accountability…Khoodeelaar! has said on the internet at least since December 2005 that Members of the UK House of Commons Crossrail Bill select committee were stooges, they were place men and place women… And their 'parliamentary' behaviour and their actual uses and abuses of their access to the 'decision-making' activities of and in the name of the UK parliament since that time has more than vindicated the Khoodeelaar! diagnosis and analysis… Similarly the House of Peers ‘Crossrail Bill Select Committee’ too behaved in the same manner and they sabotaged even the slightest attempt at democratic scrutiny of the purpose, the cost and the implications of the Big Business CROSSRAIL Bill…
We have already published in the past year the relevant evidence [more is due to be published here and on related KHOODEELAAR! web sites and blogs] of how the ‘Chair’ of the UK House of ‘Lords’ ‘Crossrail Bill’ Select committee openly misrepresented the Khoodeelaar! position and how the same ‘select committee’ actually published blatant, unadulterated lies for Big Business agenda and against the KHOODEELAAR! objections to Crossrail as we had formally put those at the beginning of the ‘process’ in the so-called ‘Upper House’…
In fact the words and the implications thereof as uttered by the ‘chair’ of the ‘House of Lords’ ‘Crossrail Bill Select Committee’ showed that the man was not even ordinarily in possession of the faculties….
How could he do what he did? Utter absolute untruths? And none of the others stopped him… And who were the ‘others’ ? Why Peter Snape, was one! .[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU So. As we are also telling the Times online this morning.,. It was of course the Times newspaper group ['Sunday Times' title] that carried out the particular investigation into the particular 4 peers....
This morning [Wednesday 28 January 2009], KHOODEELAAR! No to CrossRail hole scam CAMPAIGN organiser has told the Times online this:
"Nothing that any of the 'mainstream' Parties has so far said about what THEY would do to end abuse of Parliament by members amounts to much. They have said things mostly to 'reassure'. Parliament in the UK is at its core complicit with the executive. Parliament is a collective poodle.
A stooged extension."
This observation is the latest formulation of the analysis that Khoodeelaar! has been making for years now… Based on the evidence of their conduct, the two Houses of the UK Parliament behave as stooges… They do not hold the executive top account.
And they will not do so in the foreseeable future…
And today’s Question Time or the scheduled Question Time in the UK House of Commons is not expected to reveal anything constitutionally or morally or structurally so new, so real, so original, so honest as to make either House become a genuine vehicle for democratic representation and accountability…Khoodeelaar! has said on the internet at least since December 2005 that Members of the UK House of Commons Crossrail Bill select committee were stooges, they were place men and place women… And their 'parliamentary' behaviour and their actual uses and abuses of their access to the 'decision-making' activities of and in the name of the UK parliament since that time has more than vindicated the Khoodeelaar! diagnosis and analysis… Similarly the House of Peers ‘Crossrail Bill Select Committee’ too behaved in the same manner and they sabotaged even the slightest attempt at democratic scrutiny of the purpose, the cost and the implications of the Big Business CROSSRAIL Bill…
We have already published in the past year the relevant evidence [more is due to be published here and on related KHOODEELAAR! web sites and blogs] of how the ‘Chair’ of the UK House of ‘Lords’ ‘Crossrail Bill’ Select committee openly misrepresented the Khoodeelaar! position and how the same ‘select committee’ actually published blatant, unadulterated lies for Big Business agenda and against the KHOODEELAAR! objections to Crossrail as we had formally put those at the beginning of the ‘process’ in the so-called ‘Upper House’…
In fact the words and the implications thereof as uttered by the ‘chair’ of the ‘House of Lords’ ‘Crossrail Bill Select Committee’ showed that the man was not even ordinarily in possession of the faculties….
How could he do what he did? Utter absolute untruths? And none of the others stopped him… And who were the ‘others’ ? Why Peter Snape, was one! .[To be continued]