Gordon said Blears’ house flipping and tax dodging was “totally unacceptable”, but apparently doing the unacceptable is acceptable if you are in cabinet.  Humiliatingly Brown’s spokesman was later sent out yesterday to express the Prime Minister’s “full confidence” in Hazel.

Blears is a fighter; a weak Prime Minister, unpopular and without authority, deprived of McBride* to put the frighteners on Cabinet ministers, is not going to scare the feisty redhead too much.  So she defys him and gets away with it.  As Brown looks round the cabinet table he can see known tax dodgers and profiteers from the public purse.  Hoon, Darling, Purnell, McNulty and Blears all sitting on their profits from playing the property market at our expense.

Brown is too afraid to reshuffle.  Disappoint Mandelson and the Prince of Darkness could easily lead a deputation for his removal.  Mandelson will surely be the undertaker for the Prime Ministerial coffin, probably with the other end of the coffin held by Jack Straw.  He can’t shift Miliband in case he swaps his banana for a backbone and challenges for the leadership.  He can’t fire Blears, because if Blears goes, Hoon must go too and so on…

At PMQs Cameron taunted him, that he was afraid of an election.  Afraid that he would lose in a landslide that would see Brown consigned to history as the worst PM in memory.  Poor Gordon, the “frightened faertie from Fife”…

*Believed to be in Nice, staying at a family owned apartment.  The booze is cheaper in Nice too.

Anthony Steen MP is to retire at the next election, he has just told ConservativeHome

“The real issue is who can fix the country, and I have become a distraction, so have decided that I won’t stand again. I don’t want to risk the party losing the seat, so it is in the best interests of the party that I go. There has been no pressure from my association; they have been marvellous: members have been very put out by the Daily Telegraph coverage.  I’ve had a very good innings, there’s no bitterness, no anger, but as the saying goes, all political careers end in tears.”

He will be able to spend more time gardening, saving the taxpayer a fortune.  Voting blue in Totnes was perhaps going a little too “green” with Steen claiming some £88,000 in expenses for the upkeep of his garden.  Guido will admit this, Steen goes with class, without desperately clinging onto the greasy pole.

UPDATE : The Tory press office says: “Sir Peter Viggers has confirmed that he will retire as MP for Gosport at the next election. He will do so at the direct request of David Cameron”.  Out for a duck.  Well fired for claiming £1,645 for a floating “duck island” in his garden pond. Quackers.

Won’t be about his personal mores, just his financial dishonesty.  That Cowley Street moral high ground looking increasingly shaky..

Hat-tip : Liberal Vision

According to PoliticsHome, who interviewed 1225 voters immediately after Michael Martin resigned, the public overwhelmingly wants more politician’s blood.  This is far from over with the dispatch of the Speaker.

Good spot by Tory Bear, this is apparently his first Twitter and is supposedly a genuine reply to Austin Mitchell MP.  Get ready, Nick Brown is one of Gordon’s most trusted confidantes…

UPDATE 12.10 : Nick Brown’s Twitter account has been deleted.  Think that suggests it was genuine.

The Prime Mentalist visited Sellafield earlier this year (January 23). A report recently released by a Board of Inquiry reveals that on the very same day of his visit a radioactive leak was discovered.  Jonah’s curse goes nuclear.

The leak was classed as at “level two” on the Nuclear International Event scale – the highest at Sellafield in many years.  Not a good precedent for another international event – the World Cup.  This week Gordon held a photo opportunity to support England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup.  So that is that jinxed, football definitely “won’t be coming home”…

Not a single voter had the opportunity to mandate Gordon Brown to be Prime Minister – his thugs even scared off internal party rivals – now the Prime Minister without a mandate wants a quango without a mandate, with placemen appointed by politicians.  Where do the voters and taxpayers come in to this equation?  We have been here before, the Commissioner for Standards was a political appointment to watch over the integrity and honesty of politicians.  When Elizabeth Filkin naively took her job seriously she was hounded out of office.  Not exactly a good precedent for “independent” regulation.

We need reforms that make politicians more directly and immediately accountable to voters.  Douglas Carswell is on the money, we want the power of voter recall for underperforming politicians, we need to be involved in the open selection of candidates before every election.   We need to empower voters, not the party machines.  Too many constituencies are the permanent property of lazy, sleazy politicians.  The worst expenses abusers were in the safest seats.

The disgraced outgoing Speaker has just announced the perks are going with him; no more plasma TVs, no more iPods, no more Agas, no more stamp duty, no more gardening, no more taxpayer funded buy, renovate, sell scams,  no more flipping designations, plus a limit on mortgage interest subsidies.  If they stick to the interim proposals Guido may have to discontinue the porkbusting campaign.  Apart from the show trials that is…

Labour backbenchers are pushing the candidature of Tory MP John Bercow for speaker. Wonder why?  We have just got rid of one trougher, we don’t need another trougher as Speaker.  Year after year John Bercow has maxed out his expenses…

Source :  www.TheyWorkForYou.com