Archive for February 6th, 2010
Why the Parliamentary Expenses Scandal Won’t Go Away!
Gerry Hassan
February 6th 2010
The ongoing saga of the British parliamentary expenses crisis crossed a major watershed with the charging of three Labour MPs, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine, and one Tory peer, Lord Hanningfield, and the possibility of more to come.
There are so many layers to this. For a start the ‘gang of four’ are attempted to hide behind parliamentary immunity to prevent themselves being found guilty, literally explicitly making the case of ‘one rule for them, one rule for us’. Then there is the unprecedented nature of what is taking place, MPs being charged and held to account, which does in some sense remove another layer of the pretence of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’.
The last two MPs to be charged were Mohammed Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Govan and Fiona Jones, Labour MP for Newark, both first elected in 1997. Sarwar was found innocent, whereas Jones was convicted of election expense fraud which was overturned on appeal only for her to lose her seat in the 2001 election. Read the rest of this entry »
Football Creep and the Dumbing Down of Media
Gerry Hassan
February 6th 2010
It has been an historic day across a range of huge political issues: the resolution of the Northern Ireland impasse between Sinn Fein and the DUP, the public shame of criminal charges against MPs and a peer, BAE Systems paying back millions after the kickbacks it paid for contracts, and of course, John Terry standing down as England captain.
On a day I spent the afternoon interviewing fellow blogger Tom Harris, Labour MP for Cathcart, in the Queen’s Park FC boardroom, I know that football matters. The boardroom in question, set in a collection of permanent portacabins opposite Hampden, is filled with history and triumphs from another era. Queen’s Park won a spectacular ten Scottish Cups – all in the 19th century – before professionalism kicked in and established the dominance of ‘the Old Firm’.
The room was filled with silverware large and small, and staring at a large impressive cup, hoping it to be the Scottish Cup, I was a little disappointed to find it was some local trophy. In a place of such emotions and memories, including a framed Rod Stewart Queen’s Park strip, I could tangibly feel the power and pull of football, yet the conformity and vice-like grip of the game on our imagination grows alarmingly by the day. Read the rest of this entry »
