[POLITICS] Why doesn't he call an election!?!?!

So he agrees with me, she has picked her time to have the maximum impact. But before the leaks of yesterday, that time would have been just after the election, not before it. I'd be very surprised if Nick Robinson disagreed with that assessment.

Yes there is a serious crisis of leadership and there has been for about 9 months, this is not a new idea. Frankly, Hazel Blears doesnt have the necessary support to do Brown damage on her own but she might act as the straw that breaks the camels back.

The only reason that Brown has any support left at all is because there is no serious contender for the party leadership. I dont think he'll resign after the European elections no matter how bad it is. I can't wait to see his new cabinet. I wouldn't be surprised to see Steve McCabe (my MP and major government ass kisser) getting a big job in the reshuffle. David Milliband (one of the more likely leadership contenders) getting demoted to Police minister or some other poxy role and Ed Balls getting given some big job. I love reshuffles.

 

**************BREAKING NEWS*************************8

Taken from Sky News:

" Minister Purnell Quits And Urges Brown To Go

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has resigned from the Cabinet and called on Gordon Brown to quit. Mr Purnell said he no longer had confidence in the Prime Minister and said he should step down for the good of the Labour Party.

It comes as polls closed in the local council and European elections.

In a resignation letter released to several newspapers, Mr Purnell said Mr Brown's continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less, likely....."

I would like to see how Brown turns this around. He probably wont be calling an election early, but I think we may see a new leader of Labour within the month, maybe by the end of next week.

 

I just heared this on the news aswell, it'l be interesting to see what happens next.

 

If you're British I doubt you would. Being an American who lives in a former British colony where there is still a large British population I find it ironic because you can get a whole lot of stick for being American from Brits. Most of it is good natured but generally of 'let's blame America for all our problems' - well now some of that blame can be apportioned to the MP's spending your tax dollars for their personal gain.

So I find it funny that the problems that were rampant were exposed by an American woman journalist. No doubt parts of the UK can be very cosmopolitan. London yes. Hull no.

But I'm curious why it took an American woman to press to find this out and not any number of the investigative journalists that are British?

 

I should point out that this journalist got lucky, nothing else. She got given the information, so it's not like she went all Lois Lane on their asses.

 

err... appears you haven't done your homework. Read up on the cases. She did go all Lois Lane on their ass... on that and several other issues. Luck had nothing to do with it. It had more to do with hard work and investigative journalism.

Read on...

Nice way to be dismissive without knowing the details.
She wasn't given anything. She had to fight a legal battle after NOT being given anything time and time again. Seriously - did you even do any reading on it before you commented? Either that or you have a very odd definition of luck when considering the path of her career and the work she had to go through to bring the facts to light in the MP expenses row.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Brooke

 

Look closer at your own sources, she fought and she fought and she fought and she achieved nothing through the proper channels. Do you really think those expenses would have been supplied at the beginning of July knowing what we know now about their contents? Not a chance in hell. There would have been 'unforseen delays' and the most we would ever have seen was a sanitised summary.

She got lucky because someone within the system decided to act on their own and hand the information to the Telegraph.

 

If all the time involved in navigating that sort of hassle for you is considered 'luck' then you have way too much free time and don't really understand the role of the investigative journalist. The pressure the even brought this to the forefront of the reviews and the ultimate decision to make it available under Freedom of Information act was down to Heather Brooks continually not being fobbed off.

Obviously it was the Daily Telegraph that obtained the records but Heather Brookes work had a lot to do with the issue being brought to the surface...not just some random fact of luck... otherwise the commons authorities wouldn't have been forced to release the said information by the information tribunal and ruled in Heather Brookes et al favor in 2008.

That's not luck... that's hard work. That's investigative journalism at it's best. That IS Lois Lane!

 

Case and point.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7yIMeVSmmo"]YouTube - MPs Expenses: Interview with Heather Brooke and Stuart Bell on 8 May 2009[/ame]

 

and yet even more... seems like you're rather alone in your odd definition of luck here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/15/mps-expenses-heather-brooke-foi

 

but the expenses were never made available under the FoIA. I'll give her some (but not all) of the credit for making it a hot topic, but that's all she achieved. The expenses were never going to be released in an unabridged format - the reason for the delay was so they could 'format' the expenses. We would never have seen the really outrageous expense claims because they would have been 'formatted'.

 

Hmm... now giving someone a bit of credit who'd been fighting for five years to make the information available to the public is a pretty different thing than luck isn't it. The fact remains that she deserves a rather large amount of the credit for bringing this issue to light not only because she won the judgment in the legal battle... but also because she's been the public figure spearheading this whole thing from the start.

There was no luck in it. It was down to hard work. Investigative journalism or 'Lois Lane' as you put... She did go Lois Lane on their ass. Oh my. And then some. That's exactly what brought about this whole row. With Heather Brooke dead at the center of it all.

Or are you still not willing to admit that?

 

I will give her some of the credit for bringing the issue to the fore - she was not the only person campaigning for this information to be made public and ultimately she wasn't the person who succeeded in making the information public. If it hadn't been leaked, we probably would never have seen full unabridged records. What I think parliament would have done is reform the expenses system (as they are doing now) and commit to releasing the figures from that point onwards.

 

Well she was the one who made the most noise... put in the most time and was the most tenacious on following up after being repeatedly fobbed of by your politictians. That the Daily Telegraph received the leaked information doesn't somehow instantly make Heather Brooke 'lucky' - that's makes the Daily Telegraph lucky. lol. She'd been campaigning for 5 years on this particular subject. I can assure you the Daily Telegraph will have far deeper pockets that Heather Brooke does. Your original dismissiveness of her hard work is really quite odd.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/15/mps-expenses-heather-brooke-foi

I'm surprised with you being a Brit that have to be pressed so hard to offer any credit to someone who is working their ass off to expose politicians who are ripping your taxpaying dollar off to pay for porno and superfluous crap... and even then you only offer any sort of credit grudgingly and only when confronted by overwhelming fact of the amount of work she put in.

Sheesh. Next time maybe she'll skip all the hard work and you can just pay for their expenses with your tax dollars.

 

I think its hilarious that these littl snivelling coward rats that have quit the cabnet think that its ok for teh Uk people to be told we should not be allowed a general election but its ok to IMPOSE another unelected prime minister. Who do these little pieces of ratpoo think they are? There is no one in this country who would stand by and watch this happen. GENERAL ELECTION NOW. SNP all the way.

 

I can imagine you would get quite a lot of stick. I'm from England and regularly travel in Wester and Easter Europe and there is a lot of anti-Americanism, both here and in main land Europe. But this was largely due to the Bush years, I remember being in Barcelona in 2006 and meeting Americans who said that they told people they were Canadian just cos they could cope with the abuse they got when they told people they were from the US They were incredibly shocked at how the rest of the world viewed there country as from what I know of the times I have been to the US there is a feeling amongst most average Americans that their country is liked by most people across the world. But with the Bush years well and truely behind us and the new hope and internationalism that Obama is bringing, I really think anti-Americanism is dropping here and in Europe. And hopefully American travelers wont have to lie about being Canadian anymore!!

I don't know why it took an American. But I honestly don't find it strange. It had to be someone to bring this out and she is obviously a good investigative journalist and like I say our media is staffed with many international people.

Hull may not have a lot of Americans but it has a large Asian (Indian and Pakistani) community. As a whole Britain is a multi-cultural very diverse country. We are the most ethnically diverse country in Europe.

 

As I've already said, she deserves some credit for bringing it to the fore, but ultimately she didn't really achieve anything. She wasn't the only voice calling for the expenses to be released and I'm not convinced that all of her fighting particularly expedited the release of the documents. What she spent 5 years striving for probably took the Telegraph a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks to achieve. Work smart, not hard.

 

What I should probably add is, her greatest achievement and the thing she does deserve a lot of credit for, is showing that the FoIA is a nice idea but ultimately it can't be enforced worth a damn. Had she not found a lawyer who was willing to work for free, she wouldn't have been able to do anything about the governments refusal to honour the request.

 

Congratulations on joining the ranks of people who dont have a clue about the democracy under which you live. We do not elect our prime minister. I do not believe we ever have elected our prime minister. We elect our individual representatives at constituency level. If you make your electoral decisions based solely on who will be prime minister, you are doing it wrong.

Also, no one has told us we shouldn't have a general election, all we have been told is that we cant have an early one. This is our political system. If you dont like it, feel free to leave.

 

Absurd. Patently absurd. If she hadn't have been there hassling your politicians not stop with the threat of ongoing investigations and suing to have the right to view public information this very well could have gone unnoticed for a whole lot longer. Apparently you don't value the ability to have a transparent process.

Again... no one has been arguing she was the ONLY one. Of course not. I've posted links that show that fact so you're trying to argue something that no one else is. She was one of the most vocal and the most persistent and the one that brought much of the matters to the court... bringing pressure to bear on the MPs. That deserves credit for something and sure as hell alot more than the sheepish credit your being so stingy with. Well... for those that actually value the freedom of access to such information that is.

Rubbish. Whether your convinced or not the facts of the investigative cases by the relevant authorities are what they are. She won her case and the data would have been eventually released in due course. Despite all the stalling by the MP's and their lawyers. That the data was leaked to another paper doesn't somehow lessen or invalidate her work on the subject. Puhleeeze.

Man where do you get this stuff? Do you not like women journalist or something? The smart VS hard argument is assnine and you know it. You can apply that same argument to a great many other stories and situations and it's still just as stupid. The Daily Telegraph was able to get it because of either money and connections or a combination both or the word that has quickly disappeared from your posts after you were shown why luck had zippity doo da to do with it... luck. So now you're trying to imply that she's somehow less 'smart' than the journalist at the Daily Telegraph.

A rather pathetic argument.