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"MP Owen Paterson resigns from ‘cruel world of politics’"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... tchdog-row

This latest anti-democratic scandal and spectacular u-turn has been pretty special.

Caroline Lucas wrote:This has gone from a threatened suspension to a major political crisis because PM wanted to save his own skin from further investigations into his own misconduct.

This isn’t just about one resignation - it’s about systemic weakening of parliamentary standards & rule of law.

https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/statu ... 38819?s=20

He reaches state pension age in June next year. I am sure he will manage till then without his parliamentary salary.. Oh wait...... he will be able to claim his parliamentary pension straight away. Should have gone a long time ago. He was a lobbyist for two companies one of them Randox Laboratories was paying him £8,333 a month

With a majority of 22,949 its unlikely the North Shropshire seat will have any serious challengers from other parties. In 2019 he gained 62.7 % of the vote with labour (the runner ups on 22.1%)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_No ... y-election

We are being asked to believe that the Government's decision to set aside the Commons Standards Committee and the Standards Commissioner, just before the vote to confirm a former minister's 30-day suspension, was entirely coincidental. We are also being asked to believe that the proposed replacement would be a Select Committee with a majority for the governing party AND chaired by a member of that party, was not an attempt to reduce oversight of MPs behaviour. We are also being asked to believe that the resultant "Get Out of Jail" card for the MP concerned, was not the driver for this decision.

The whole scenario stretches credulity beyond breaking point and the later climb-down by Boris et al shows that they are willing to throw a colleague under a bus, to avoid criticism. Not a good look, but not for the first time.

Like a naughty child that attempts to test the bounds of behaviour, the government seem determined to remove anything that holds them to account - except the electorate who (unfortunately for them) hold the whip-hand. For now, until they can find a way around that..........

Here's the front page of the Daily Mail today, which unusually and unexpectedly took sides against the government on this issue. That probably helped today's outcome, whilst other right-wing media still mostly looked the other way after their earlier attempts to paint him as a victim.

The Mail and many Tory MP's could not stomach Johnson's stunt.

Early morning interviews really are going well for the Borisocracy. Kwasi Kwarteng is under fire for his implied threat to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, yesterday. Then this morning, Nadhim Zahawi tried to avoid questioning about the U-turn on the Today programme - bluster, bluster, avoid, bluster, divert, bluster..... a keynote performance by a sleaze apologist, claiming that the Prime Minister saved us from the "mistaken conflation" of "Parliament's vote" on the "reform" of the current system with the case of Owen Paterson. When asked if the commissioner would be free to investigate Boris for his own misdemeanours, he sounded like a cartoon policeman - "nothing to see here, move on!" I hope the whole house of cards collapses.

Sad that Owen Paterson has learned nothing from this episode.

Having played the game and been caught with his hand in the till, he has resigned.
Not because he has done wrong and he feels he should step down.
No. He has resigned because he didn't like the bad publicity and punishment he was getting for being caught out.

And that is exactly why he was getting so much abuse.
He was found in the wrong and thought he could brazen it out. And he was wrong about that too.

Speculation this morning on the today programme is that Owen Patterson will be offered a peerage by Boris Johnson. Would he be so daft?

Richard Frost wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 06 2021 8:20am

Speculation this morning on the today programme is that Owen Patterson will be offered a peerage by Boris Johnson. Would he be so daft?

Does he care? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59188972

Richard Frost wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 06 2021 8:20am

Speculation this morning on the today programme is that Owen Patterson will be offered a peerage by Boris Johnson. Would he be so daft?

He was daft enough to think letting Paterson off would be acceptable.
He was daft enough to think we'd not notice him hiding in a fridge.
He was daft enough to think "let the bodies pile high" was a good policy.
He was daft enough to call burka wearers "letterboxes".
He was daft enough to lie about how much money we paid into the EU.
He was daft enough to think covid isolation rules didn't apply to him, despite having been hospitalised with it previously.
He was daft enough to throw ridiculous amounts of money at a test and trace system that didn't work.
He was daft enough to pay his mates to make PPE when they patently had no ability to do so.
He was daft enough to think he could have neither a border in the North Sea, nor a border on the island of Ireland.

So, yes, he'd be daft enough to reward someone for political corruption.