The Why's beat the When's

There are two groups of politicians, the 'Why?'s and the 'When?'s.

The former are the curious, industrious and creative and seeking to find out why. The latter are waiting for the day when they get promotions or favours. That the theory of the Public Administration Select (PASC)  chairman Tony Wright today.

He was awarded the top prize of Parliamentarian of the Year  by the Political Studies Association. It was for his great work chairing PASC. He unselfishly wrote to members of the committee saying the award was for all of us. The citation said that:

 ' Under his watch the committee had worked hard to hold government to account and through its inquiries and reports, such as though on lobbying and good government, demonstrated the analytic parliamentary function at its finest,'

That's high praise from this prestigious group who appreciate the finer points of the political theatre. It was pleasure to see some of PASC's backroom staff were invited to today's presentation.

 

Especially gratifying to Welsh guests today was the Lifetime Achievement in Politics Award given to Rhodri Morgan. It was accepted by his wife Julie because Tuesdays are his busiest days. He has not stood down yet. The award is for:

 

'His major contribution to political life in the UK and especially to the recent development of Welsh politics and the Welsh Assembly.'

 

Julie read a pointed and witty comment from Rhodri. He said his best decisions in life was moving from studying languages to studying politics and then moving to be a political practitioner. He said he became First Minister in the Welsh Assembly because of his political studies and the opposition to him from Tony Blair. 'Tony helped to make me the people's choice.'  Absolutely true. I believe someone wrote a book of how the dragons overcame the Blair's poodles. We now have Dragons led by dragons.

 

Another winner told me today that she was surprised I was still talking to her. She had not been straight with me. I met Heather Brooks as an interviewer for the Dispatches programme. I took her at face value as a reporter not a campaigner.  I was open and truthful with her.

I did not know that she was a campaigner against MPs expenses problems. It would not have made a difference to what I had to say. I had no hesitation in talking to her. I agree with her citation which said:

 

'She had influenced the political agenda in her tireless and inspiring campaign to bring details of MPs expenses to light.'

 

She is not entirely happy with her great success. She is miffed that people ask if she works for the Daily Telegraph. They got the glory by buying stolen information and publishing it with a strong anti-Labour bias. She courageously did the spadework that forced publication. She really did 'provide a role model for investigative journalists.'

Comments

[Gareth]

I know this is off at a huge tangent, but...

Paul, I have been listening to a recording of the best parliamentary speeches. Many made me smile, but only one made me think of your current position on the most current, and important, issue of our time. It was the inaugural speech of the new (Sir) Jeremy James Hanley MP.

Yes, it was a completely different circumstance, but as a soundbite... uncanny.

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Gareth. I remember Jeremy Hanley as an MP. What did he say in his maiden speech?

[Dick Puddlecote]

I see your Ministers are rolling out ridiculous excuses to stop competitors entering Big Pharma's control of the nicotine market again.

[Dick Puddlecote]

No HTML accepted, huh? OK, link below instead.

http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Ban-on-tobacco-product-blasted.5854064.jp

[HuwOS]

Whether for or against, Snus where it is sold, for example, in the United States is sold by, amongst others RJ Reynolds under the Camel brand(RJ Reynolds has a market capitalisation of appx 15 billion dollars), big pharma might be Goliaths, but if the tobacco companies are Davids, then he's all grown up and put on a hell of a lot of weight since his first fight.

Your comment is surely just another prelude to your endless whining about the ban on smoking in public places again.

You will no doubt once again invoke your freedom of choice, while ignoring that you and the vast majority of all smokers, are addicts and addiction has a genuine negative effect on your ability to make a choice, limiting you to feeding your addiction or suffer withdrawal.

Please by all means argue that snus should be no more harmful to the user than some other tobacco products and being allowed to use it might mean that people who don't like standing out in the rain on a cold night are not forced to due to their addiction.

But your consipiracy theory, is nonsense, that big pharma are controlling health experts and all major political parties worldwide, so that they can sell NRT products at the expense of those good hearted people from the tobacco companies.
After all big pharma don't even plan to keep those customers, they drop them after at most 6 months, tobacco companies at least plan to stay with their customers for life, however long that might be.
Talk about unfair.

[Kay Tie]

How apparently nice of Huw to show such kindness to snus users, trying to save them from themselves. However, his sneering authoritarian attitude betrays his true emotion: the joyless puritanism of the left that hates vast numbers of people based on their social groupings.

Most funny of all is his lecture that people have no choice because of their addiction: Huw is addicted to viewing the world through a socialist prism of puritan misery and is unable to see things as they are.

[Huw]

So hard to tell with KayTie, precisely when she is being stupid, plain ignorant or mendacious, especially when KayTie is so capable of combining all three in one sentence.

Preventing the purchase of Snus is unfair as its availability might allow some of the tobacco addicts affected by the ban on smoking in public places to placate the cravings of their addiction without the discomfort of standing out in the cold and the rain and without forcing people who don't share their addiction from participating with them as smokers would otherwise be doing.
That is the logical objection to the governments decision but not the one that your counterpart used.
I imagine your fantasy world and his have a lot in common.
Whether this part is common to both of your fantasy worlds or just part of his alone is something only you will know but whether shared or not it is however nonetheless sheer insanity to think that government, health agencies etc worldwide are trying to get people to stop smoking to fill the coffers of big pharmaceuticals due to the sales of NRT products, which is the argument your pally went with.

Smoking is indisputably harmful to health and despite the protests of your new pal, it is harmful to non smokers who are exposed to it in an enclosed environment as well as to the smokers themselves.

Now you can either argue the issue, take up a stance or not, but throwing in the view from your fantasy world (as a kneejerk reaction) and simply take yet another opportunity to say that everything and everybody you don't like is a socialist and all socialists are authoritarian joyless puritans and therefore anything you don't like is authoritarian joyless and puritan is a delusion/mistake/falsehood (strike out whichever is/are not applicable this time) of yours that I am certain everyone is already familiar with and it is, not surprisingly, duller and more tiresome every time you repeat it, not to mention providing nothing to any conversation or argument.

[Kay Tie]

"Smoking is indisputably harmful to health"

Yes.

"it is harmful to non smokers who are exposed to it in an enclosed environment"

Not very. Not as hazardous as other risks that are permitted. Not hazardous enough to justify a jihad against smokers where we take away their children (and leave genuinely harmed children in neglect). But smoking is something that has no "social value" (to use the latest ideological phrase of the neopuritans).

"all socialists are authoritarian joyless puritans"

Some of them aren't joyless: they like champagne.

"not to mention providing nothing to any conversation or argument."

You fail to read what I write and fail to engage. You don't listen, but project a fantasy (you've deemed me a friend of big tobacco now, which couldn't be further from the truth).

I call "authoritarian" when you advocate the imposition of rules curtailing the freedom of people to do things that harm no-one else. That's pretty much the definition of authoritarianism. If you don't like my endless labelling of you then you merely have to stop being an authoritarian. Alas that's very unlikely.

[Gareth Howell]

The Expenses scandal was a question of the changed relationships between the courts and parliament, nothing whatsoever to do with party politics.

The Foundation of the Labor party in parliament thanks to the trade unions was for wages for elected members.

In those days MPs were prepared to accept the side kicks that PF has mentioned in other threads on his Blog. That is all they needed. It still is today, but it still would not be sufficient for the competent Union Convenor to go to parliament, as he does.

The Expenses Scandal was a Storm in a Tea cup, everybody's, and waiting for a highly undesirable lump of sugar to drop in to it.