David Cameron has taken the sensible line and apologised for the tennis lawn greed of his taxpayer funded toffs.
Sadly, the Tory blogs are not on message, and are concentrating on explaining why it is OK for Tory MPs to do precisely the same things that it is wicked for Labour MPs to do. Particularly risible is their rallying around the obnoxious Michael Gove.
Gove is important to them because he is what passes for an intellectual in the modern Tory Party. He has written books. They are very slim books indeed, despite a large and well-spaced font, but nonetheless they are books. Gove is the Tories’ answer to the BNP, the respectable face of Islamophobia. His books are extended essays in well-turned prejudice.
Gove claims an expertise in Islamic radicalism despite the fact he does not know any Islamic radicals. He writes of conditions inside communities in Britain he has never met in towns he has never visited. He has never sat in a radical Madrassa in Pakistan or on a hillside in Afghanistan, but tells us what he has been told goes on there. He is a thin-faced recycler of the bigotry of others, a dupe for any apostate looking for new position, an engine to make racism respectable. Gove is a smooth-faced fascist.
Gove has “flipped” his second home. He has changed the designation of his second home between London and his constituency, and thus charged the taxpayer to furnish both. The Telegraph has exposed this.
The Tory blogs are outraged at the exposure of their idol. Iain Dale squeaks:
Fraser Nelson has the full story on Michael Gove. He is totally in the clear and if the Telegraph are suggesting otherwise then they had better have very good lawyers.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=1503082829110971606
I am suggesting otherwise, Iain and Michael. I don’t have a lawyer. I look forward to hearing from yours.
Tory bloggers would have us believe that Gove was “different” to the New Labour sleazebags because he was moving for genuine family reasons. Frazer Nelson has written this piece in the Spectator to explain that Gove told him the genuine reasons for his move, but unfortunately it got cut out of his piece at the time:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3604396/gove-the-full-story.thtml
This is the exculpation on which Tory apologists are seizing to say Gove was in the clear. We have this from Dizzy Speaks:
“it may be difficult to prove that a fiddle was the intent of the switch. Especially if, like Gove, you’re on the record talking about it yonks ago because you really did move”.
Well, except he’s not on the record. It wasn’t published. We have the word of crazed ultra neo-con, and favourite Murdoch commentator, Frazer Nelson. I would take the word of Ronnie Biggs before I took the word of Frazer Nelson. On anything.
But let us look at this. Gove had an existing London residence as second home and claimed to have it furnished by the taxpayer. His family was in the constituency home in Surrey Heath. He then moved his family from Surrey Heath to his London home, and then claimed for furnishing his Surrey Heath home as his family home.
WHY?
If the family furniture came from Surrey Heath to London, why could the taxpayer purchased London furniture not just go in the other direction?
AND
If the move really was for family reasons, why should the taxpayer pick up the tab for family reasons?
AND
The news that the commute from Surrey Heath to London is too difficult, will come as news to over 10,000 of his constituents who do it every day, a great many of whom have jobs more stressed and less flexible than Gove.
It will also come as a shock to the million people working in London whose daily commute is harder than that.
I am glad that the Tory scandals have also been revealed by the Telegraph. But my main hope is that eyes on the internet will have been opened. Tory blogs have been enjoying great popularity as their party is opposing a rubbish government.
What the Gove affair demonstrates beyond doubt is that, should the Tories get in power, those trendy Tory blogs will be even more lickspittle yes-men, purveyors of excuses for the inexcusable, servile followers of uncaring leaders, than NuLab blogs are now.
I’m sorry, but your argument is rather fatally undermined by your uber selective quote choice.
I also note that you have a banner procliming the Iraqi dead from the US invasion. Best not mention that your side also had a small part to play in that. Mind you, probably also best not confuse the prole’s with that sort of thing…they might not make the right choice next time round.
This Gove character taken as the “brains” of the Tory Party, and elevated as the policy advisor to Cameron only is indicative of the bankruptcy of ideas that the Tories are facing.
The fact that he could be MI5 perhaps would make this chap a double agent for Mossad have been most certainly busy handling him for years, and his rise from a busy body at large into the politics.
Furthermore his racist diatribes, passed as his “wisdom” which have been lately kept on a very short leash, and kept him out of the limelight, only prove that Tories are trying to win the next election as ever based on the principles of; see how crap the other side is!
“Best not mention that your side also had a small part to play in that”
Um, am I reading this wrong, or is this commentator suggesting that *Craig Murray* is in some way connected with or a supporter of New Labour?
Re: Frazer Nelson – he writes for the Spectator, which has more pricks per square inch than top-notch gay porn. Not necessarily the hallmark of a principled man (and he’s repeatedly wrong on economics, too).
dizzy’s s(-)ite:
lwtc247 said…
Is your posiiton that whenever it is said ‘a verbal communication was exchanged’ and it didn’t happen to get published, then we should be content that it did happen?
If not, then what is your position?
Thanks.
11-May-2009 15:53:00
dizzy said…
QUOTING LWTC247: “Is your posiiton that whenever it is said ‘a verbal communication was exchanged’ and it didn’t happen to get published, then we should be content that it did happen?”
No, my contention is that a being “on the record” is not necessarily the same as “being published”. An “on the record” interview can be edited. The edited parts are not therefore, off the record per se, they’re just not published. The question of their truth or untruth is not the point. The point is that to say that that which is unpublished is not on the record is the flaw in Craig Murray’s argument.
11-May-2009 16:03:00
lwtc247 said…
You made the being “on the record” is not necessarily the same as “being published” quite clear, but that is quite off focus.
Murray is saying (apologies to him for my unauthorised ‘explanation’ of his written words) is that the convo should be regarded as suspicious because it relies solely upon the retrospective declarations of an associate of Gove. If however it have been published, (which would mean it was on the record) then Gove’s claim could not in fact be questioned.
I find it very difficult to use “he told me” as reassurance a claim is true. Neither (presumably) do a number of judges who have imprisoned thousands employing such a defence.
11-May-2009 16:22:00
dizzy said…
circumstantial ad hominem argument
11-May-2009 17:01:00
———————————-
Forgive me for posting this here, but dizzy’s appeal to grab debate onto his is clearly a sack of /spuds/.
Demonstrably, he isn’t interested in discussing anything. So let’s leave the world of hypocrisy where the sins of the blue kind are justified, but not of the red kind. Ironic the two party system isn’t it (and the three legged horse called the LibDems)
Point of order: Actually they don’t use red any more, do they? Rather some crap colour that was the conclusion of thousands of hours from consultations with psychologists, spin doctors and campaign organisers in the belief somehow a colour will can be used to screw the public into favouring the British Nazi party (formally known as New Labour)
Seductive music plays, as chocolate sauce and strawberries are poured over Jacqueline Smith’s ample breasts:
“Not just any Nazi party… but nu-M&S Nazi party”
We should of course thank Heather Brook for initiating the process of getting this information out to us using the Freedom of Information Act.
Seductive music plays, as chocolate sauce and strawberries are poured over Jacqueline Smith’s ample breasts:
I don’t know whether to choke the chicken or hurl.
/I expect that line by JimmyG’s will soon make it into the US field manual of ‘interrogation techniques’/
Yes, three cheers for Heather. I have heard that we weren’t going to get all of this on July 1st, if at all (who knows what they might have done), but a watered down version instead. Has anyone else heard this and does anyone have any idea what the differences would have been if it is indeed true? I can’t seem to find this information easily.
Sorry, off topic:
Anyone interested in torture, dodgy dossiers, and false ‘links’ between Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein will be interested in this:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/
I only discovered it now.
That didn’t work too well, did it. I’ll try again:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/
ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/
‘. . .anyone have any idea what the differences would have been if. . ‘
Well, firstly addresses would have edited out.
This means that we wouldn’t have even known that Moran’s dry-tot claim was made for a house in Southampton – neither her constituency nor London.
The arch-hypocrite Iain Dale always asks “have you read what I have written” when defending, as he so often has to, his used johnny of a blog.
As ever the answer is “unfortunately, yes” which is how we know he is a hypocrite, now defending Gove when he would have attacked a Lib Dem and once having nothing whatsoever to say about Derek Conway when he would have shouted his disgust of any similarly guilty Labour MP as loudly as possible.
Whilst hiding behind a thin veneer of independence, Tory bloggers, and especially Dale, are exactly as they have been described here, “lickspittle yes-men”.
Iain Dale should hang his head in shame and Dizzy should grow up.
P.S. Guido is a hoon.
Off topic but a message of interest for Craig. This link to a Morning Star article about Spicer and Aegis was just on Medialens.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/features/scandal_of_britain_s_hired_guns
Forgive me for posting this here, but dizzy’s appeal to grab debate onto his is clearly a sack of /spuds/.
Demonstrably, he isn’t interested in discussing anything.
I’m happy to discuss things, just don;t put forward arguments that you demonstrably fallacious reasoning as you, and Craig Murray have. Getting all upset when I point out that your argument is flawed, which it is, ust makes you look silly.
Tne fact is if person A makes claim X. In this case Fraser Nelson. And then person B makes an attack on person A’s circumstances. See Craig Murray’s attack on Nelson’s political stance/employer etc. That attack on circumstance does necessitate that original claim X is false.
Attempting to assert the opposite is fallacious reasoning. Period.
Oh dear. Can this be the same ‘Dizzy’ who refused to even consider my account of a certain event because of (false) claims about my circumstances made by Iain Dale?
I don’t know if Tory bloggers are defending Tory corruption more than they would Labour corruption. But even if they are, such intellectual corruption pales in comparision to the moral corruption of some of the expense claims – particularly multiple “flipping”. Nothing less than fraud charges and immediate suspension and investigation would be appropriate in some cases (regardless of whether they were “signed off”).
Given all that, I wonder Craig whether attacking other bloggers is the best approach? There may be one or two whose serious inconsistency is worthy of criticism, but in general it might be better to try to build bridges with other bloggers, and build some “blogosphere clamour” together. Anything that adds force to the call for resignations on both sides of the house is worthwhile, IMO.
Phil/Dizzy,
Of course I unfairly left out your final sentence in order to score a debating point. I do polemic. Hadn’t you noticed?
Oh dear. Can this be the same ‘Dizzy’ who once cited a court case out of context in order to ‘prove’ that it backed his point when I had cited (and linked to) that same court case to show that it backed mine?
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2007/11/dizzy_thinks.asp
Who would have thought that the miniature,bespectacled Gove who used to present and give pompous short-trousered monologues from time to time on Janet Street Porter’s Network 7 programme would now be where he is. Then again..
I’m apolitical-in the sense i loathe all parties and politicians but you have to admit the Tories do corruption with far more cold-eyed grace and outright chutzpah than any of them.
Mind you they’ve had far more practice over the years…
This is the trouble with party politics, sometimes people are forced to defend the indefensible simply because if they don’t their structured worlds fall down around them.
I find it strange that we have a formalised slanging match and call it a functioning democracy.
I’m also pretty disgusted as the sense of revolution in the air over expenses when in comparison people didn’t really care that much about whether the invasion of Iraq was illegal. If more heads roll over expenses then they did over Iraq then it will show that jealousy is a far stronger motive than seeking the truth.
Bloody hell Craig, I haven’t been on this blog for a while, but it seems I’m missing out! You’re a terrific writer, and I’m now officially a fan. I think the way you write in such scathing and yet accurate terms is fantastic.