I’ve got to say I was impressed with what happened last week. Al de Piffle received the report and realised he was going to be suspended for more than ten days. This would have triggered a recall petition and a by election he would have humiliatingly lost, probably ending his political career and aura of popularity. He then resigned. His parting whinge notwithstanding this was a Conservative Party majority committee stabbing him.
His henchpeople also resigned as, while the government accepted the names for “ennoblement” or whatever that was handed to it the commission culled Al’s list by half. Half of his parting shot fuck you to the people of Britain were deemed unfit for the House of Lords (which is where Margaret Thatcher promoted the worst paedophiles and rapists in her cronysphere).
Looking on from Ireland that is some fucking impressive operation of checks and balances and some accountability that gives me real hope for the survival of democracy in Britain.
Our Standards in Public Office committee is deliberately useless and appointments to the upper chamber have no fitness for office check. We really need to learn from this.
The committee said before Mr Johnson announced he was quitting as an MP, it had wanted to recommend suspending him from for more than 10 days.
This would have meant he would potentially have faced a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
The report also revealed two of the committee’s MPs, the SNP’s Allan Dorans and Labour’s Yvonne Fovargue, wanted to expel him from the Commons - but were outvoted.
Expulsion is extremely rare in Parliament’s history, having occurred only three times in the last hundred years or so.
But suspending him is no longer an option, given that he’s already stood down as an MP in his blistering resignation statement last week.
However, the report says that now, given what he’s said about the committee, they would have recommended a ban of 90 days - an extremely long ban by the standards of recent years.
Yeah. The Oxford group behind the first vaccine said they’d put in for funding for research on this novel design of vaccine, but there was no interest until the pandemic.
I just drove past a sign telling you to observe social distancing. Those signs have lasted longer than the funding.
Potentially 4 by-elections (if Nadine Dorries ever actually leaves, she says she wants to discover why she was denied an honour – a glutton for punishment).
