The moral standards in public life in the UK are now lower than in any other G7 country. Ordinary decent in the UK people are scared to speak out against what they perceive as wrong for fear of being labelled a homophobe, a racist, an Islamophobe, anti-immigrant etc by the many special interest organisations who speak for these minority groups. How are such organisations financed? If they are run on public money why is there not a register of how much they receive from the public purse and where the rest of their funding comes from?
A married Canadian Brigadier General with two children, Daniel Menard, due to lead the forthcoming offensive in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been fired following 'inappropriate conduct' involving a female soldier. He was sacked for conduct unbecoming an officer and a loss of confidence in his 'capacity to command'. Compare that with the blind eye turned by UK police authorities on the serial infidelities of the married Chief Constable of Manchester found dead on a Welsh hillside some years ago. He was well known before his appointment as Chief Constable as a serial philanderer with female police officers under his command. No one spoke out about this as they would have been told by the PC Home Office it did not affect his performance. Clearly the Canadians expect higher standards of behaviour of senior officers than we do in the UK. We only found out about this Chief Constable's conduct after his unusual death in Wales.
It is the same siren voices that seek to exonerate David Laws my local MP. Forget about his minor financial transgressions that might be called fraud theft or embezzlement in the non-political elite. What would have happened to a benefit claimant who claimed £40000 in clear breach of the rules for their partner?
He was a brilliant Chief Secretary to the Treasury they say. How on earth can they say that? He only did the job for 18 days! A brilliant political talent wasted. I would have thought that knowing right from wrong was a pretty fundamental political requirement for any minister of the crown. Am I the only one who sees Laws behaviour in opposition of hosting a dinner in Parliament for his lover's lobbying firm as a conflict of interest or is it just political brilliance that is way above my head.
Note how his homosexuality has been brought in to confuse the issue of his fundamental dishonesty in this matter. Mr Integrity was how my neighbour Paddy Ashdown described him during the election campaign! Note also how the LibDem spin has changed since Friday, when the story broke, from Laws was an intensely private man whom nobody knew was a homosexual, to today's version, it was common knowledge Laws was a homosexual. Just as I said in this blog on Friday.
Cameron's troubles are now coming in battalions. It seems his replacement as Chief Secretary, Lib Dem Danny Alexander, (it had to be a LibDem under the coalition deal) flipped his second home just like little squirrel Nutkin Hazel Blears, to avoid capital gains tax. Nothing illegal but not open to us ordinary mortals. Alexander may repay the tax but of course is still left with a nice tax payer funded gain. Cameron better be careful or he will soon run out of LibDems!
It is the failure of our leaders to apply ordinary common sense checking and vetting procedures to the political class that is the root of this problem, shades of Blunt, Burgess, Philby and McLean, Cambridge men all like Laws and Clegg. I remember when I was appointed to the Bank of England I had to wait 6 weeks for security and vetting checks to be completed on me. Obviously there is an exemption for our political elite.
In Spain the rain is now becoming a financial blizzard with ratings downgrades and mortgage banks being nationalised. As AEP writes in today's DT the Spanish government is now in deep trouble and will not be able to get its crucial legislation through. What they have passed will worsen their problems.
Interesting that Pierre Lellbouche, Frances Europe minister has compare Sarkozy and Merkel's bailout fund to the NATO mutual defence clause. Well one is a military treaty and Lisbon is a political economic treaty but to the French its immaterial. As he told the FT the bailout is against Maastricht, has created an EU debt union on the sly and defacto we have changed the treaty.
Greece will limp on for up to one year and then default, or as it will be spun its debt will be restructured. If it then wants to get back some economic growth it will have to leave the Euro. If this happens, Spain and Portugal with something like 750 bn € debt needing to be rolled over in the next two years will be the IMF's next customers that is unless wee George and ginger Danny don't barge the UK into the queue first.
It is heart breaking what the outlawing of common sense by political correctness and the EU have done to our country but they could not have done it without the supine assent of our sordid political class. As a former German girl friend of mine used to tell me the UK's problem is that its officer class is now corrupt and decadent.
Oh would some power the gift to gie us,
To see ourselves as ithers see us.
R Burns
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