It is no secret that Alistair Carmichael is a friend of mine. Not least because he told parliament so in 2005:
“The Government’s signals to the Uzbek regime have not always been helpful. I am thinking especially of their treatment of my old friend, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who has done us all a great service in graphically highlighting the appalling human rights record of the Uzbekistan Government.”
Alistair was one of very few MPs who raised the dreadful human rights abuses in Uzbekistan even before I got there. He has a genuine interest in human rights worldwide, and had a much better motivation in going into politics than the large majority of politicians. He was never anything like a diehard unionist in personal conviction. I felt quite proud for him when he was asked during the campaign what would his role be in negotiating for the UK the conditions of separation after a Yes vote. He replied that he was Scottish, and he would be on the Scottish, not the UK side.
I have never chosen my friends by my politics, and I am not one of those people who is only happy in the company of those who agree with me. I am happiest with a few drinks and a good argument in intellectually challenging company. I also do know that all human beings are flawed, and I don’t expect perfection. So I have no intention of ending friendship with Alistair.
All of which makes it hard, but I have to say that I really do think he needs to resign as an MP, and to do so immediately.
It was not just a mistake to leak that memo, it was wrong. It was even more wrong because he himself believed it was written in error and did not give Nicola Sturgeon’s true opinion. But in an election in which the Scottish Lib Dems faced wipeout, he saw the advantage of playing this trick. That was wrong on many levels. I would add that I feel very confident that Alistair would never have done it without consulting Clegg first. Clegg should resign too. And instead of the usual Cabinet Office stitch-up, there needs to be a real inquiry into the whole history and production of that extraordinary minute, and whether Alistair was set up to do it. The Scottish Government needs to be an equal partner in constituting that inquiry.
Alistair has no alternative but to resign because he then repeatedly lied about what he had done. It is much better that he goes now with a full and frank apology to everyone, especially his constituents. When you have blatantly and repeatedly lied about something, you cannot expect people to give you their trust again. That it even seems a possibility is an example of the erosion of ethical standards, of which Tony Blair is of course the greatest example as liar, mass murderer and multi-millionaire.
But we should not lose sight of the real lesson. The corrupt and rotten structures of the UK state are so insidious that they can take a fundamentally decent man like Alistair and lead him to behave so badly. There is something within the rotting organisms of UK institutions in their decline from Imperial power and dependence on corrupt banking and corporate systems, that infects almost all who enter them. While I worked for the FCO I saw really nice colleagues, decent men and women I worked with, go along with organising what they knew to be illegal war in Iraq, and with facilitating the torture and extraordinary rendition programmes. Because that was what paid their mortgage, looked after their children, and above all gave them social status as high British diplomats.
Westminster gives untramelled executive power to a party with just 23% of the support of the registered electorate. The majority of parliamentarians are unelected Lords a great many of whom are themselves mired in corruption – and some much worse. The organs of state power are used to facilitate the flow of money from the poor to the very wealthy, which is the actual cause of the deficit in public finances. The rewards of being on the inside are sweet; those outside are measurably dispossessed of wealth, and measurably alienated in politics. The media is controlled by this corporate state.
Alistair Carmichael’s story is not the story of a bad man. It is the story of what happens to a good man who buys in to UK power structures. The real lesson of the sad story of this period in Alistair’s life is that the UK is evil, corrupt and corrupting, and that the UK state needs swiftly to be broken up.
Here it is the real Queens speech.
https://vimeo.com/48197993
re the Queen’s speech:
I have been out until now and have to dash off again, so would someone – preferably one of the Loonies – please make sure to indicate the salient points for my close reading before I get back.
Thanks in advance.
An essay at categorisation.
1/. The obsessives: Goss – Eastern Ukraine/ Mary – Jews, Zionists and Israel/ Baal Zevul – Tony Blair….
2/. The sincere but confused (with occcasional flashes of clarity) : Nevermind / DonnyDarkside / Rebecca Cohen….
3/. The false didacts : Lysias / Herbie….
4/. The rabid, engaged in dark personal therapy : Fedup/ Macky / Passerby…
5/. The fun-seekers (bored) : RobG / Republicofscotland….
If course, some of the Original Excellences overlap categories and I have not included conspiracy theorists as a separate category since this is a characteristic shared by all of the above categories.
The good guys and guyesses – calm, rational, sceptical, unwilling to accept la pensée unique on here, accurate, knowledgable, etc… – do not need me to identify them, they know who they are!
Ba’al Zevul 27 May, 2015 – 1:19 pm : “Anyway, the police are looking at Carmichael’s slur”
“Mr Carmichael, I have an awkward question to ask you.”
“I would love to answer but I can’t comment until the police have finished their investigation”
Prediction : The investigation will last until everybody has forgotten the story, then be quietly dropped. Carmichael will never be charged.
True, Ba’al, but…
You’re just a pack of pixels. All of you. Me too. Suck it up and post something interesting.
https://img1.etsystatic.com/007/0/7134734/il_570xN.362747565_2i2y.jpg
“I have been out until now and have to dash off again . . .”
Stay away as long as you like and have a nice holiday. See you in a week or two. 🙂
Prediction : The investigation will last until everybody has forgotten the story, then be quietly dropped. Carmichael will never be charged.
Sub-prediction: Win-win for the SNP. If Carmichael isn’t officially held to account, cue sustained outrage about immunity of Unionist establishment. This could run and run. One thing the SNP has is stamina.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why Habby is allowed to post here since he constantly attacks other posters, and engages in manifest lies, like not knowing what is in the Queen’s Speech.
He is still trying to find something wrong with me with which to beat me over the head.
I see no use for a poster who is constantly testing the limits of free speech.
The tag team are fighting the keyboard war, like never before!
Poor old kitty clawing weakly and slowly, happy in herself; she has earned her nap on the settee!
The compunction to tell others what to think is the degree of contempt these supremacists cretins have for others. These verily believe us (none tag team members) to be dumber than a fence post, hence “thinking it all out for us and telling us what we ought to be thinking”. Waxing lyrical about who is what, and what they stand for, coming form a tag team member is not much of an endorsement, but hey we all are dumb and can be so very easily fooled!
People cannot make their own minds up, they need to be told what to think, as every damn line the tag team writes wreaks of.
======
Out of Topic (hehehehehe)
Ex-MP Joyce avoids jail for assault
Eric only beat up the boys! It is OK!
======
Audacity of faith: (or is it total pigheaded denial of reality?)
On a thread that is about “elected” representatives are all liars, expense and other things fiddlers. In a regime that it’s opening of parliament is started by the (traditional) kidnap of the lord chamberlain, and men wearing frocks and horse and carriages parading through the streets of its capital!
Now that takes the biscuit even by the weird and moronic standards of the fake “prophet”
Where are the non dubious regimes? That is the question?
Who said this?
Everyone knows that politics is a robust trade, especially in an election campaign. No-one would expect candidates to spend their time highlighting their opponents’ virtues but to suggest any smear is justifiable must be wrong.
Most worryingly it betrays an attitude that I had hoped would have been eradicated by the expenses scandals of the last parliament – namely that different rules should apply to MPs than apply to the rest of the population. If Tesco tried to smear the Co-op in the same way it would soon be in trouble. Why should politics be different?
Harriet Harman must be wondering when she will next be able to open her mouth without upsetting someone. A couple of weeks ago she had to apologise for referring to my colleague Danny Alexander as a “ginger rodent”. She might have thought she was on safer ground disowning Mr Woolas and his activities, but no. She has been faced by what is described by insiders as a “mutinous reaction” by Labour MPs. There is talk of them all chipping in to a fighting fund to help pay for their former colleague’s legal fees.
The right to freedom of speech is a fundamental one but it does bring a responsibility with it to tell the truth. The right to smear an opponent is not one we should be defending.
Well done you. It was Alistair Carmichael. Letter From Westminster Shetland Times, 12/11/2010.
http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2010/11/12/letter-from-westminster-49
Ba’al Zevul
27 May, 2015 – 1:19 pm
The insatiable desire for the last word, eh?
On a web forum there is no such thing.
__________
May have appeared that way, but sincerely, untrue. Maybe a foolhardy attempt to improve the atmosphere here.
************************
Dreoilin, fully agree with all your sentiments and thank you.
Have a meeting to rush to now, more later.
Lovely afternoon to you and all
V
Queens speech, The bæst, baski, fascis, is tightening.
And I didn’t listen to a word of it. I sometimes listen to local elderly ladies a bit.
Amazing. The same Google searches that turned up those Daily Mail and London Times articles yesterday on the memorial service for Janner today yield no hits. Have the articles been disappeared? Has somebody monkeyed with Google?
The link to the Daily Mail story still works. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3098148/Kenneth-Clarke-William-Hague-Nick-Clegg-politicians-attend-memorial-service-Leon-Brittan.html
Try ‘Leon Brittan’ instead of ‘Janner’ Lysias. I grant you it’s confusing: they have much in common. But Brittan was a Tory.
I wonder if she was a local lass if i’d talk to her, or anyone would? Wandering down to the co-op, festooned in encrusted diamonds, riding atop a gold quilted Carriage, preaching Austerity.
Our servant.
Yes, thanks, Ba’al, stupid mistake on my part. Google search with “Leon Brittan” still turns up the Daily Mail article.
@Habbakuk 26 May, 2015 – 4:44 pm
Items 4, 5 and 6:
+1
I might agree with 1 and 2 myself, but am less certain about No. 3; there are plenty of republican bellyachers on this blog, and I’ve known a few personally.
lysias a mistake anyone would make; Leon Brittan, Greville Janner, Jimmy Savile, chimney sweep boy,…. How did he get into this?
Correction: I retract the expression “bellyachers”, with apologies. After all, republicans are entitled to respect as humans.
Warmonger resigns as Peace envoy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11633511/Tony-Blair-resigns-as-Middle-East-peace-envoy.html
Job done, I suppose.
“Apologies, but the loonies all seem to blend into one other over time, don’t they.”
_____________________________
Oh no need to apologise, Habby old boy the likes of you and Villager,have blended together many moons ago.
But fear not in some religions,lunatics are considered touched,and even revered,so there’s hope for you yet.
“For the life of me, I cannot understand why Habby is allowed to post here since he constantly attacks other posters, and engages in manifest lies, like not knowing what is in the Queen’s Speech.
He is still trying to find something wrong with me with which to beat me over the head.
I see no use for a poster who is constantly testing the limits of free speech.”
____________________________
Trowbridge.H Ford
Re your above comment,I come to the conclusion,Craig,likes having him around,which is fair enough,it’s Craigs blog.
Better the devil you,that sort of thing.
Though Habb is more destructive,than constructive regarding comments.
“hey we all are dumb and can be so very easily fooled!”
Speak for yourself. Pusillanimous agatering carbuncle.
Thanks Herbie, for the just-broken news. He’s been dithering about this for months, and the famous sourceclosetomrblair has never been identified. However, confirmation here-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32905468
I imagine they won’t be changing the brochures for his upcoming engagements in Toronto (Simon Wiesenthal Centre event), Krakow (What hedge funds can do for Poland’s high labour costs) and Bethlehem (What hedge funds can do to get religious tourists into Israel), and that various dodgy African potentates will still be seeking his peacemaking skills and JP Morgan contacts.
Still, it’s a start.
He’s been very quiet just lately. I do hope he’s ill.
O come now, it may be that capitalism and peace envoy ain’t exactly mutually enforcing .. But it’s not like it promotes totalitarian despotic regimes is it……
“Job done”?
Have we all given up on law then? hay ho. Maybe it’s not all bad. We can just stand at the coastline and lob stones if he ever tries to enter this land. Maybe it would be some kind of justice.
And we can steal the Queens wealth, our land back. Etc etc.
“The problems we face in the West are, at ground level, culture, education, and constitutional Law. In most of Europe and the US, the culture is shot to shit; in most places, the education is narrow and gullible; and constitutional law is being trampled on a daily basis. Hardly anyone in mainstream media writes about this, most voters never think about it, and pols keep insisting it’s a figment of the imagination.
Further below that, elites run almost everything from Wall Street to Warsaw – so there is a political process problem, social despair issues, and an economic version of capitalism that remains what it’s always been: an excuse for a few hogs to get fat, own media, and/or pay off the legislators, the police – and increasingly, the bureaucrats. Every single tenet of neoliberal economics has been found wanting in practice, and flawed in philosophy.”
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/the-media-here-is-the-news-but-where-is-the-searching-analysis-behind-the-news/
“It must sooner or later self-destruct. But when it does, the overriding culturo-constitutional fix will be fudged, and at best grey functionaries – or at worst psychopaths – will come to power…indeed, they are already doing so. One thinks of the Brussels fraternity, and the current UK leadership cabal, respectively.”
Wealth moves East.
And God bless the Slog, Herbie. Good link.
The first needs low wages to compete, the second needs high wages to consume
That’s it in a nutshell. However, it is not necessarily bound to self-destruct. What it is bound to do is oscillate. Which is what it’s doing. Hence a stable economy is out of the question without the acceptance of a median solution. And no, that’s not the Third Way.
“Have we all given up on law then?”
Looks very much like it. I’d imagine the West will enter a long period of stasis, immense wealth in the midst of mass poverty.
Very post-colonial.
“I do hope he’s ill.”
Remember that time he was taken to hospital in the wee hours with heart palpitations.
A rare moment of hope.