UK News: Blunkettgate

[beet1e]

I am dismayed by this Blunkett affair. Here we have one of the most senior members in Blair's cabinet ordering first class rail travel warrants, at taxpayers' expense, on the strength that he is shagging another man's wife. OK, so what he does in his private life is - private. But the real issue is that the rail warrants were paid for by the taxpayer, until Blunkett's fraud was discovered, whereupon he offered to pay the money back. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are people in the prisons he runs who are there for having stolen less, he looks set to keep his job. If he does, I think I will be scared. It will show just how corrupt and rotten this government really is. They're in an unassailable position, and they're playing that card for every penny it's worth.

Tom Utley wrote a belter of an article in Friday's Telegraph. If you live in the UK, this is worth a read if you haven't seen it already.

Source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/12/03/do0302.xml

Last Friday, a very old lady tottered on to the bus that my wife was driving and held out £1 to pay her fare. Since the over-60s are entitled to travel free on London buses, my wife asked her: "Haven't you got a pass?"
 
"I'm afraid I've left it in my other coat," said the old lady, still holding out her £1.

I hope that I will not get my wife into trouble with her bosses when I say that at first she refused to accept the money. This was for two reasons: 1) the old lady was obviously well into her eighties, if not her nineties, and was therefore patently entitled to free travel; and 2) she looked very hard up, the sort to whom £1 would mean quite a bit. "Hop on," said my wife. "You needn't pay."

But the old lady wouldn't hear of it. It was her own silly fault that she had left her pass behind, she said, and she insisted on paying the full fare. Very reluctantly, my wife took the money and issued the ticket.

I tell the story because it is a reminder of the great importance that most Britons still attach to being scrupulously honest in all matters concerning money. But can the same thing be said for the Home Secretary?

I thought of that old lady at the weekend, when I read that David Blunkett had given a first-class rail voucher, worth £180 and issued for use by an MP's spouse or partner, to the married woman with whom he was having an affair. After being caught, he has now admitted that he was wrong to give Kimberly Quinn the voucher, and has announced that he will be paying the money back.

There is also some suggestion that he has apologised - although it is not at all clear to whom. He has certainly not apologised to the Commons, whose privileges he abused, or to the taxpayers who would have been done out of the money had his wrongdoing not been exposed.

I am fascinated by the statement made by Mr Blunkett's spokesman on Tuesday, admitting his boss's error. "Having examined the detailed rules today," he said, "he realises he has made a genuine mistake and will be repaying the cost of the ticket to the parliamentary authorities and apologise [sic] for the mistake."

The Home Secretary is also said to have believed that he was entitled to claim for Mrs Quinn's travel, because he was "in a relationship" with her.

I will not discuss the differences, if they exist, between a "genuine" mistake and any other sort. It is that word "detailed" that pulls me up short. The suggestion, here, is that one has to read through page after page of small print in order to discover that rail vouchers intended for MPs' spouses are not to be used by any Tom, Dick or Kimberly with whom an MP happens to have been to bed. How absolutely extraordinary that Mr Blunkett seems to have assumed that they were.

We can all imagine what goes through the mind of somebody who is bedding another man's wife: love and lust, certainly - and I don't for a moment doubt the sincerity of Mr Blunkett's affection for Mrs Quinn (although he has a mighty odd way of showing it). But also, surely, Mr Blunkett would have felt guilty about the wrong that he was doing to Stephen Quinn, and about the risk of exposure in the press.

Affairs of this kind are necessarily furtive - as witness Mrs Quinn's habit of using the back door to his house, instead of the front. I reckon that the very last thought that would cross most MPs' minds, in these circumstances, would be: "Ah, since I am bonking her, she must be entitled to first-class rail travel at the taxpayers' expense."

True, the rules have recently been relaxed to extend free rail travel to MPs' "partners" or homosexual lovers. But how could any punctilious man regard another man's wife as his partner?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you: is it really plausible that Mr Blunkett, a man whose entire working life is concerned with the intricacies of the law, was unaware that he was doing wrong at the time when he gave Mrs Quinn that rail warrant from London to Doncaster?

At the very least, would you not think that it might have occurred to him that there was some question about whether he was allowed to give the warrant to another man's wife? Might he not have checked the "detailed rules" before, rather than after, he was caught?

It is no good arguing that £180 is a trivial matter. That may not sound much to Mr Blunkett or Mrs Quinn - and it is certainly an unnoticeable drop in the vast ocean of government wastage. But there are plenty of people serving time in the prisons run by Mr Blunkett for stealing less.

Do you realise that it would take a London bus driver more than 20 hours' work, often having to rise at 3.30am, to earn enough money for a first-class rail ticket to Doncaster?

As for Mr Blunkett's suggestion that apologising and giving back the money will somehow make everything all right, is he planning in future to offer the same dispensation to bank robbers and muggers who are caught red-handed? "Just say sorry and give back the money, mate, and we'll say no more about it." I hope not.

I have to hand it to the Home Secretary that he has been quite extraordinarily successful in diverting everybody's attention from the rail warrant, which is surely by far the gravest aspect of this affair. Somehow, he seems to have got everybody talking instead about whether he "fast-tracked" a visa for Mrs Quinn's nanny.

I don't give a damn about that, as long as the nanny's papers were in order. The scandal there, if there is one, is that so many people whose applications for visas are perfectly in order have to wait up to a year before they are processed by Mr Blunkett's disgracefully inefficient department. It is hardly a scandal if a lucky few get them processed efficiently - even if it turns out (which it hasn't, yet) that their employers had to sleep with the Home Secretary in order to swing it.

Maybe we should all sleep with Cabinet ministers when we have trouble with bureaucracy, although I can't think offhand of one that I fancy. Powerful figures have always used their influence to help their friends (look how many of Tony's cronies have ended up with handsomely paid jobs in the Government). That is the way of the world.

But money is a different matter, as that old lady on my wife's bus understood so well. Nothing less than absolute probity will do. It may well be that Mr Blunkett is as innocent as he claims. All I am saying is that he has a case to answer. The charge that he was knowingly dishonest should be put before a judge and jury.

[Chortle]

Morning Beetle. It would seem that Labour are jumping the gun somewhat, at least the Conservative sleazey excesses didn't come to light until their 3rd term.

Back then it was who paid what at the Zurich Hilton when Aitken was swinging, terribly decadent. At least good old Blunkett is going tits up over a trip to Doncaster

I hope he goes, not just because of this but also the fact he would clearly like us all to be bar coded and scanned at every street corner while the Police are filling in his latest policy re think forms back at the station. The only thing I'd miss about him is his dog.

BTW, loved the Torygraph defence in the Galloway libel case - neutral reportage my arse Hope the bill doesn't hamper any quality investigative reporting in future.

[Dowding]

The Telegraph is a joke that is about as funny as the transcript of a Tory annual conference.

I found the Judge's demolition of their defence highly amusing.

[beet1e]

Oh well, he's gone.

[Schaden]

Rejoice.....Rejoice!!!

[Swoop]

Another one bites the dust.

Good.

next!

[beet1e]

ROFL! Schaden & Swoop.

He had to go. It was another Beverley Hughes deal. There had been an email, but Blunkett denied all knowledge... Still waiting to hear about the £180 he tried to steal from the taxpayers.

I think I'll steal a car tonight. If I get caught, I can always claim I'd "forgotten" it was against the law, and offer to give it back. Well, it worked for Blunkett.