Darling and Beckett’s expenses scams just add to the long sorry tale of New Labour sleaze.
These people are moral and political pygmies.
I try from day to day not to dwell upon the way they ended my career as Ambassador and subjected me to an onslaught of slur and smear in what one senior Foreign Office source told the Guardian was “A campaign of systematic undermining.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/oct/18/uk.foreignpolicy
They did this to me because I queried internally their support for a vicious dictatorship in the “War on Terror” and because I was arguing in internal secret correspondence that it was illegal to obtain intelligence from torture.
They brought eighteen allegations of gross misconduct against me, and I was cleared of all charges after an internal invesitgation in which they loaded everything against me. Now you could make one or two charges of gross misconduct against someone, which turned out to be untrue, as part of a genuine process. But eighteen? All unfounded? It was a political stitch-up, overseen by Jack Straw.
They hastily added at the end of the process a nineteenth charge of disobeying an instruction to keep the false charges secret, and that was the only one I was found guilty of.
Of course, if I had not made it public, I would have been quietly stitched up on all charges.
But there was a sequel. After I was cleared and they were forced to let me return to Tashkent, they subjected the Embassy to an unscheduled “Surprise audit”. A team of three accountants was flown to Tashkent to go through every single transaction in the Embassy accounts since I arrived there, looking at every voucher.
This cost the taxpayer over £100,000.
The FCO had figured that if you went through anybody’s accounts with that fine a toothcomb, you would be bound to get them on something. But as it happens, I am pathologically honest about money. At the end of this vast exercise, it was found I owed the FCO just over 26 US dollars for a claim for which I had lost the receipt.
I paid them back.
And this was initiated by the unspeakable people who at the same time were themselves raking in to their personal accounts hundreds of thousands of pounds from the taxpayer!
New Labour are scum.
Kerry,
Sincerely wish you well for the run of Talking To Terrorists in Birmingham. I think Robin Soans is extraordinarily skilful, and weaves together disparate stories into something really gripping.
You might have also mentioned Gordon Brown’s expenses scam too.
Please can the next one to be exposed be Jack (Squealer) Straw.
If you lot who are taking the moral high ground over Craig’s use of the word ‘hate’, knew what he had been through, I think you would be less inclined to point fingers at him.
Personally speaking, if it were me that had been through his experiences with the FCO, I would probably be serving 50 years for attemting to blow up the Houses of Parliament !
Don’t save your hate for New Labour, get good use from it and extend it to the Tories and Lib Dems too. All the political parties act in collusion to make sure the gravy train still runs. Sleaze, as you put it, isn’t party political but widespread, because politics has become a career rather than a calling.
Revolution, that’s what we need. Out the lot of them and start again.
Darren,
Yes, but how do we do that?
I just wanted to air the view that I think it was a huge miscalculation for all the slimeballs to come out saying they did nothing ‘wrong’. A big, big, big mistake… They should have just shut up and waited for the independent enquiry. Something like ‘we can’t comment while this is under investigation’. The enquiry would have recommended big changes and although the controversy would have continued to simmer, for a while at least, it may have been forgotten. This wouldn’t have been popular of course. But no, they had the misplaced bravado to throw that bullshit at an already suffering general public. A volcano has erupted methinks. Oh dear.
There are many ways to implement revolution but it will be difficult because all the terrorism laws have been put in place to stop revolution rather than the occasional bomb from Islamic fundamentalists set up by the secret services.
May be radical behaviour would do for starters. Boycott the elections next year; there’s absolutely no point in voting. After a few months or less we’ll be back to the same crap because politicians don’t make key decisions.
Stop paying council tax. Get the whole country to strike for a day. Hold mass demonstrations etc.
We could always order up large shipments of Guido masks like in ‘V For Vendetta’.
Craig
You are more like “Gandhi or a Mandela” then you think.For you do as they do…
“This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, in its place is something that you left behind let it be something good.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Yes..NuLabour are cowardly lying scum.
But lets leave pygmies out of the comparative equation please?They are a proud,resourceful,decent people.
January 2002
“New Labour linked to world’s most corrupt firms”
“The Patricia Hewitt link”…
http://tinyurl.com/cdr4na
Came to it late… but much approve of you concluding line: Labour are indeed scum. That slogan really needs to be painted in 4 foot high letters on the pavements of Parliament Square.
The atrocious abuse of power these student marxists have wrought on the UK is unspeakable.
Labour scum deserve to be buried so deep at the next election that they never resurface, a new political dispensation is an absolute priority.
Thank you Mr Murray for a well written blog.