The Politics Thread

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Plebgate's morphed into Plodgate, heads will roll.

[Bruce Rioja]

Plebgate's morphed into Plodgate, heads will roll.

I heard Lord Baker call it 'Plodgate' last night. Where's that come from?

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Plebgate's morphed into Plodgate, heads will roll.

I heard Lord Baker call it 'Plodgate' last night. Where's that come from?

Ann Treneman in the Times, she's a finger on the pulse of politics kind of woman - she called it Plodgate on Wednesday.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Plebgate's morphed into Plodgate, heads will roll.

I heard Lord Baker call it 'Plodgate' last night. Where's that come from?

Ann Treneman in the Times, she's a finger on the pulse of politics kind of woman - she called it Plodgate on Wednesday.

See http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/c ... 636490.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's just the B side, Bruce.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Plebgate's morphed into Plodgate, heads will roll.

I heard Lord Baker call it 'Plodgate' last night. Where's that come from?

Ann Treneman in the Times, she's a finger on the pulse of politics kind of woman - she called it Plodgate on Wednesday.

See http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/c ... 636490.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's just the B side, Bruce.

feck it - let's subvert the paywall...

Plebgate was just the B-side to Plodgate

Camilla Cavendish

The disgruntled officers behind Andrew Mitchell’s fall risk destroying trust in the whole police service

A week before Andrew Mitchell and his bicycle got into a spot of bother, a friend who frequently goes to meetings in Downing Street mentioned that she’d been upset by an unpleasant and obstructive new officer at the gate. When Mr Mitchell got into trouble, I assumed that he’d been goaded by the same person. But I didn’t know the Chief Whip and felt the word “pleb” was surprising, but unforgivable.

Now, Plebgate has become Plodgate. It seems that the word “pleb” may have been made up, just like the claim in the police log that “several members of the public looked visibly shocked” at what Mr Mitchell was supposed to have said. The CCTV footage shows no such people present.

Then we learn of the allegation that a Metropolitan Police officer pretended to be a member of the public who had witnessed the scene, but in fact had not been there at all.

And finally there is the similarity of the wording in the e-mail sent by this officer to his MP — John Randall the Deputy Chief Whip — to the police log which was leaked to the press. What could have been a Clouseau farce turned out to be no laughing matter.
That e-mail was crucial in convincing No 10 that Mr Mitchell might be lying. I understand that as soon as the Prime Minister was told about it, he called in Mr Mitchell to fire him. He was only dissuaded by his insistent and lengthy denials, and a threat not to go quietly.

What happened next is B-side history. The Police Federation crammed the airwaves, waved banners outside the Tory party conference in Birmingham and eventually got their man. Wild with outrage over the Government’s attempts to change their terms and conditions to stop abuses of early retirement and sickness benefits, their tactics were always dubious. Now they look worse.
The police have form when it comes to tampering with evidence. Officers did it over Hillsborough, over Ian Tomlinson’s death at the G20 protests, and after the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, killed by police marksmen.

After Mr de Menezes’ death, CCTV footage from Stockwell was mysteriously unobtainable. And when Mr Mitchell first asked to see CCTV footage in his own case, according to his friend David Davis MP, he was told that it was a matter of “national security”, and was too unclear to be worth seeing.

None of this means that the majority of officers are not still the brave heroes of lore, who risk their lives to protect us. But the idea that you cannot trust every policeman any more — and I was brought up to believe that you could — is corrosive. Increasingly, it feels as if there is one rule for the police and another for the rest of us. When an officer stops me on my bicycle to warn me that a road is closed, he can be as rude as he likes. If I retaliate in kind, I can be arrested. When the police leak someone’s name to the press, they are unaccountable. But when Damian Green, then a Tory Shadow spokesman, received a leaked e-mail from the office of the Home Secretary at the time, officers ransacked his office and arrested him.

A big story of this year, which has been underplayed, is the extent of police corruption exposed by the Leveson Inquiry. Officers routinely tip off the press about whodunnits, sometimes with terrible consequences for innocent people: they convinced reporters, for example, that Christopher Jeffries had murdered Joanna Yeates in Bristol. The Leveson Report laid into journalists who printed the leaks. But it barely laid a finger on the service.

Every time the police investigate themselves, it feels a little less convincing. Britain’s proud tradition of independent policing means that police forces are not hauled before endless committees — or rarely. Politicians talk a lot about policing but are wary of interfering in the operational matters of a police service that, after all, guarantees the security of the State. The coalition’s policy of electing police commissioners made people uneasy precisely because it jarred with our deep-seated belief that police and politicians should be firmly separate.

But that policy was an attempt to make the police more accountable — which is badly needed. Our traditions have left us relying heavily on individual chief constables being decent people who can inculcate the right culture down to the rank and file. But not every senior officer has the chutzpah of Sir Robert Mark, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 1970s London, who cleaned up the notorious CID prompting the line that “a good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs”.
The Conservative Party’s attempts to make the police more accountable are an essential part of Plodgate, because they have ended decades of truce.

The policies on elected commissioners, the appointment of Tom Winsor as Chief Inspector of Constabulary to look into police pay and conditions, and the erosion of pensions that many serving officers see as just compensation for risking their lives, have created an absolute loathing of the Government in a service that feels demoralised and underappreciated.

But the Federation’s aggressive tactics will not help to restore public trust in the police, which is ebbing away not just among young men in London who bitterly resent being stopped and searched, but also among the middle classes.

In trying to elide government cuts with changes to stamp out abuses which it knows were wrong, the Police Federation has done its membership no favours. It is hard to imagine the Army slow handclapping and booing a Defence Secretary, as the Police Federation has regularly done to Home Secretaries.

It is hard to imagine serving Army officers appearing on Question Time or holding outspoken political views. The police service says that it wishes to be above politics, but it has become thoroughly politicised.

Plebgate was a convenient bandwagon for the Police Federation. But it needs to take these new allegations very seriously indeed, and act on them if they are proven. Unless it does, we will know that the Federation — and some of its members — think that those of us who do not wear uniform are simply plebs who can be deceived.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

But that was Camilla Cavendish (with a name like that she ain't writing for the Mirror) the DAY AFTER little Annie Treneman coined Plodgate. Credit where credit's due folks.

[Lord Kangana]

I think we should make Andrew Mitchell wait a couple of decades for the cover-up to be revealed.

And as for Lord Baker, I have to thank him for brightening up my day, when he said " we shouldn't have a politicised police force" on the radio yesterday. Who said politicians don't have a cracking sense of humour?

[thebish]

[William the White]

Keep em coming thebish, keep em coming...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

There are lots of things the public are ignorant about. I doubt this is one of the worst examples.

I don't think this state of affairs has been brought about as a result of a sustained Government propaganda campaign in the way that has been suggested (and certainly not illustrated in the relevant Independent article mentioned in that graphic).

In fact, quite to the contrary - I think politicians are tempted into playing to these popular grumbles about welfare from time to time, precisely because they think they go down well with the majority. It's populist tactics more than divide and rule strategy, in my opinion.

My reaction to the first figure is 'so what?'. If anything, I would say most people are in favour of people receiving temporary support when temporarily unemployed in a tough market place. Presumably the vast majority of the welfare bill is on pensioners? What this figure really shows is how few people understand what a troubling position we are in there. Neither the Independent or the TUC offer us a breakdown so we, the brainwashed masses, can be better informed and have a better debate.

The second figure isn't particularly exciting either. Most people look at Government and suspect incompetence is widespread and will doubt that they are able to know how much fraud is being perpetuated in the system at all.

On the third figure, the public isn't actually that far out and 27.8% actually strikes me as a surprisingly high figure. Over a quarter of people claiming JSA have done so for an entire year?! That's a hell of a long time not to have had any work at all.

[Montreal Wanderer]

There are lots of things the public are ignorant about. I doubt this is one of the worst examples.

I don't think this state of affairs has been brought about as a result of a sustained Government propaganda campaign in the way that has been suggested (and certainly not illustrated in the relevant Independent article mentioned in that graphic).

In fact, quite to the contrary - I think politicians are tempted into playing to these popular grumbles about welfare from time to time, precisely because they think they go down well with the majority.

My reaction to the first figure is 'so what?'. If anything, I would say most people are in favour of people receiving temporary support when temporarily unemployed in a tough market place. Presumably the vast majority of the welfare bill is on pensioners? What this figure really shows is how few people understand what a troubling position we are in there. Neither the Independent or the TUC offer us a breakdown so we, the brainwashed masses, can be better informed and have a better debate.

The second figure isn't particularly exciting either. Most people look at Government and suspect incompetence is widespread and will doubt that they are able to know how much fraud is being perpetuated in the system at all.

On the third figure, the public isn't actually that far out and 27.8% actually strikes me as a surprisingly high figure. Over a quarter of people claiming JSA have done so for an entire year?! That's a hell of a long time not to have had any work at all.

Regarding the first figure, it is not clear pensions are part of it. See http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_we ... ng_40.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Pensions are considered a separate item from welfare and not part of the breakdown.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

There are lots of things the public are ignorant about. I doubt this is one of the worst examples.

I don't think this state of affairs has been brought about as a result of a sustained Government propaganda campaign in the way that has been suggested (and certainly not illustrated in the relevant Independent article mentioned in that graphic).

In fact, quite to the contrary - I think politicians are tempted into playing to these popular grumbles about welfare from time to time, precisely because they think they go down well with the majority.

My reaction to the first figure is 'so what?'. If anything, I would say most people are in favour of people receiving temporary support when temporarily unemployed in a tough market place. Presumably the vast majority of the welfare bill is on pensioners? What this figure really shows is how few people understand what a troubling position we are in there. Neither the Independent or the TUC offer us a breakdown so we, the brainwashed masses, can be better informed and have a better debate.

The second figure isn't particularly exciting either. Most people look at Government and suspect incompetence is widespread and will doubt that they are able to know how much fraud is being perpetuated in the system at all.

On the third figure, the public isn't actually that far out and 27.8% actually strikes me as a surprisingly high figure. Over a quarter of people claiming JSA have done so for an entire year?! That's a hell of a long time not to have had any work at all.

Regarding the first figure, it is not clear pensions are part of it. See http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_we ... ng_40.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Pensions are considered a separate item from welfare and not part of the breakdown.

You will notice that I did not say 'pensions' in my original post.

I'm none the wiser, or better informed, having clicked on your link, however.

[Montreal Wanderer]

You're right. I assumed the major expense of pensioners would be the pensions (and health care), but perhaps you meant something in welfare other than pensions and health care (I'm not sure what ). My link wasn't to educate you but just show you what they considered welfare versus other things. I imagine precise expenditure figures could be easily obtained if one was interested.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

You're right. I assumed the major expense of pensioners would be the pensions (and health care), but perhaps you meant something in welfare other than pensions and health care (I'm not sure what ). My link wasn't to educate you but just show you what they considered welfare versus other things. I imagine precise expenditure figures could be easily obtained if one was interested.

I didn't look closely at your link, but it was quickly clear that those figures have nothing to do with the one in Bish's graphic. Unemployment, for example, is much more than 3% of that breakdown of what it is classifying as 'welfare'. And i have no idea what the "not elsewhere considered categories" consist of.

My distinction between spending on pensioners and pensions was only to demonstrate to you that I was not thinking of public sector pensions as being part of the welfare bill!

I do think the basic state pension has to be included in any calculation of welfare that says unemployment only accounts for 3%. And yes, there are 'other' pensioner benefits that cumulatively add up to a figure that is not insignificant (I suppose this is stuff like winter fuel allowance, care allowances etc.).

Consider the link below:

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/03/ ... fits-bill/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This must be the sort of figures the TUC were using. If so, it is clear they have misused them because this source in a left wing blog concludes that although JSA is indeed 3% of the bill, when you factor in income support and ESA, directly replacing the incomes of those not in work accounts for just over 10% of the bill.

The fact is, I have no idea what figures either the TUC or the Independent were using, because neither of them has the slightest interest in informing us, and both want to present things selectively to make their political point. Which is exactly what they are accusing the Government of. What a depressing world we live in.

[Prufrock]

Are you happy David is back for a bit thoug?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Are you happy David is back for a bit thoug?

I'm not sure I understand?

[thebish]

I think TW should publish a review of the site and declare that we are ace! Why get someone independent to do it?

[Prufrock]

Are you happy David is back for a bit thoug?

I'm not sure I understand?

Attempt at internetting on the Blackberry fail, a potent cocktail of clumsy thumbs and a desire to keep things concise.

I meant: Are you happy that it looks like David Miliband will be returning from his sabatical to the forefront of domestic politics sometime soon?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Are you happy David is back for a bit thoug?

I'm not sure I understand?

Attempt at internetting on the Blackberry fail, a potent cocktail of clumsy thumbs and a desire to keep things concise.

I meant: Are you happy that it looks like David Miliband will be returning from his sabatical to the forefront of domestic politics sometime soon?

Ah, I had missed this story today.

I agree with what most of this tribal Labour blogger says in this piece: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danho ... or-labour/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But yeah, Miliband is my kind of politician. An impressive, serious intellect, but also a straight talker and a likeable guy, not a robot. It was a catastrophe for the standard of British political debate that the Labour Party were so weakened by their decision to appoint his brother, who will always lack credibility. My instinct is that having him around can only be a good thing, even if he strengthens the opposition (but as Dan Hodges says, it'll cause the Labour Party as many problems as the benefits it brings).

[Prufrock]

Are you happy David is back for a bit thoug?

I'm not sure I understand?

Attempt at internetting on the Blackberry fail, a potent cocktail of clumsy thumbs and a desire to keep things concise.

I meant: Are you happy that it looks like David Miliband will be returning from his sabatical to the forefront of domestic politics sometime soon?

Ah, I had missed this story today.

I agree with what most of this tribal Labour blogger says in this piece: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danho ... or-labour/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But yeah, Miliband is my kind of politician. An impressive, serious intellect, but also a straight talker and a likeable guy, not a robot. It was a catastrophe for the standard of British political debate that the Labour Party were so weakened by their decision to appoint his brother, who will always lack credibility. My instinct is that having him around can only be a good thing, even if he strengthens the opposition (but as Dan Hodges says, it'll cause the Labour Party as many problems as the benefits it brings).

It's late, so I'll read the blog tomorrow, but on the face of it, I'm not sure it's that big a problem. How many serious, big-hitting, national news, Westminster politicians do Labour have? Despite the criticism, I don't think Ed is any less credible than Cameron was this time in the last election cycle, but, him aside there is Balls, Burnham (who's gone semi-mental), and then...see I like Sadiq Khan, but he isn't a vote winner, 'I've ate Cooper-Balls', and that's it. I think Labour have to try to get him in there (and as far as I can see it's Shadow Home Sec or nothing) but if they can, it's a massive boon.

It's the how do you fit two really good strikers into the same team argument.