Gay terrorist shocker

Is someone out to get the Speaker?

Revelations over the weekend that the Speaker has spent £148,900 on furniture, £191,000 on an air conditioning system and £13,000 on art for his official apartment in the Palace of Westminster make for grim reading.

Particularly for Labour MPs who have been defending Michael Martin as a working-class hero and the victim of a Daily Mail-led campaign of snobbery against the former sheet metal worker.

OK so I get that the Speaker's apartment is used for official business and you can't really pop down to IKEA when you live in a Grade I listed property.

But the sums involved here do seem profligate. However, these stories are not about art or air-conditioning. Like the furore surrounding Lord Irvine's wallpaper, these attacks are about the man.

I think the Speaker is below-average and I sympathise with the many MPs on all sides who want him to retire.

The Tories are right not only to still be sore that Labour broke the convention of alternating Speakers from the main parties in 2000, when Martin succeeded Betty Boothroyd.

He has appeared at turns nakedly partisan and close to incompetence. But the point about the Speaker is that no MP can speak out against him. It has been left to former independent MP Martin Bell to say what needs to be said: it is time he stood down.

Because the Speaker in many ways IS the House of Commons, MPs are in a difficult position. They cannot openly express their displeasure at his performance and the ida of removing him is unthinkable.

There have been problematic Speakers before, many of them Labour. George Thomas was a drinker, for example, but the "usual channels" prevailed on him to stand aside for the legendary Bernard Weatherill.

The problem with Michael Martin is that, because the attacks on him appear class-based, they raise the hackles of many of his former Labour colleagues.

But the bottom line is that a Speaker on the front pages of the papers cannot, by defenition, continue in his job as an impartial chairman and figure of respect in the House.

We can expect Michael Martin to stand down at the next election. My money is on Ming Campbell to succeed him, and if he does not want it, there is talk of John Bercow.

After the shambles of the 2000 election, we can also expect his successor to have been decided behind the scenes.

From Wikipedia!

Betty Boothroyd announced her retirement shortly before the summer recess in 2000, which left a long time for would-be Speakers to declare their candidature but little opportunity for Members of Parliament to negotiate and decide on who should be chosen. Many backbench Labour MPs, especially from Scotland, advanced the claims of Michael Martin as a long-serving Deputy Speaker. Most Conservatives felt strongly that the recent alternation between the main parties ought to be maintained and a Conservative Speaker chosen. The most prominent Conservative choices were Sir George Young and Deputy Speaker Sir Alan Haselhurst. With several maverick candidates announcing themselves, the total number of Members seeking the Speakership was 14, none of whom would withdraw. A lengthy sitting of the House saw Michael Martin first proposed, then each of the candidates proposed as an amendment which was voted down. In points of order before the debate, many members demanded a secret ballot.

Is our politics genetic?

very interesting article on the bbc website which poses the question, are our political views genetic?

Why we love the Sarkozys

The next time the President of France comes to London, can he bring his son Jean? We want to ask him about the small animal he appears to be hiding in his trousers.

Though there might be some quarantine issues ...

Catholics victorious over embryology bill

It may have saved Gordon Brown the crisis of three members of the Cabinet resigning over a point of religious principle, but I for one would question whether people who cannot reconcile party and government policy with their faith should be in the Cabinet at all.

After days of hysterical and mostly totally inaccurate attacks from leading Roman Catholic church leaders, the PM has caved and announced that three parts of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill currently before Parliament will be a free vote for Labour MPs.

While this may spare Ruth Kelly, Des Browne and Paul Murphy from resigning from the government, it raises the role of the Roman Catholic church in British society.

If, like me, you grew up in Ireland in the 1980s and 90s, the sight of the government caving into the brute force of the Roman church demanding that MPs put faith above their role as elected representatives is worrying.

Ireland did not have divorce or abortion because priests stood up in their pulpits and instructed their parishoners how to vote in referendums. The church effectively decided social policy.

Now they have won a significant victory in the UK, and they are unlikely to rest there.

The PM should have stood firm, as Tony Blair did over gay adoption. The church on that occasion threatened to close its adoption agencies rather than consider gay couples. After much internal wrangling Blair, ironically a convert to Catholicism, called their bluff.

What is most troubling about this recent church spat is that they have told blatant lies about the scope and the impact of the bill. There will be no Frankenstein monsters, half-human half-beast creations.

More than 200 charities have spoken up for research. Yet the PM, somehow fearful of the small minority of his own MPs and Cabinet colleagues who feel they must side with their church, has allowed the bill to be challenged by Catholic politicians.

The Roman church has been trying this tactic in every country where they have influence. Gay rights in Italy are frustrated by their malign influence. They blatantly tried to stop the re-election of the Spanish government earlier this month, preaching that people who had allowed gay marriage were "anti-family."

Now they have managed to get their way in the UK. Fortunately, the bill will still pass and those Catholic MPs will have to explain to their constituents why they did not keep their best interests at heart over this matter.

Oh, and yes David Cameron and Nick Clegg have given their MPs a free vote, but then this is not their bill is it!

Read this excellent article on the topic of church vs constituents!

Mirror skewers bicycling Dave

You have to smile at the good old-fashioned journalism on show in today's Daily Mirror.

Journalists, determined to find something about David Cameron's cycling to the Commons stunt to take the sheen off it.

They followed him on three Wednesday's as he cycled from his Notting Hill home to Parliament.

The Tory boss was spotted flouting the law by cycling the wrong way in a one-way street, through red lights and the wrong side of a bollard on his 30-minute trip to work.
Hapless Cameron was breaking the rules within minutes of leaving his Notting Hill home in West London for Westminster.
He sailed past a large red no entry sign even Mr Magoo would have noticed. Another clue was the huge arrows on the road pointing which way traffic should go.

Next to be ignored was a keep left beacon in the Mall. He veered off to the right...no change there then. Cam also hurtled over a toucan crossing, for cyclists and pedestrians, while the signal was red.

Dave, to his credit, immediately apologised and said he would not do it again. But still, its made it onto the One O'Clock News, which is not good at all.

Obama, race and gay business

Hey

it has been a while - work it mad ATM.

Anyway my friend asked me what I thought about diversity strategies encouraging companies to purchase services from businesses just because they are gay owned, and why I published this article on the website I edit.

Here is what I said - probably the most logical thing I am going to write tonight, so enjoy!

gay businesses: interestingly Stonewall ask that their workplace diversity champions ensure their suppliers have gay-friendly hiring policies, which I agree with

But just going to a business because its owner is gay is madness, and only in America would I back going to a business because its owner is from an ethnic minority

Most of the UK minorities seem to be doing quite well enough in business without our help.

This sort of action entrenches the ghettoisation of the gay community.

It always strikes me that people are shocked to find out that most of the people who write for PinkNews.co.uk are straight

Like a straight person could not get their head round the issues, like I would not, as a journalist, be able to go to write for the Jewish Chronicle and easily pick up what their issues where and become attuned to it.

I think businesses should be encouraged to be gay-friendly, but ownership is a ridiculous model on which to judge whether or not a company will be the best to fulfil a contract.

"For me that speech yesterday showed more than ever that this man can be a great president," you said in your email.

I agree 100% and you know I do - that is why I published it in full, at one in the morning, having just read it.

But a news organisation exists to challenge the accepted wisdom and to stimulate debate.

Duane, who wrote the obama piece, is a black gay American - I felt his points were valid, if only because everyone deserves a say, if only for their view to be shot down, as is already happening on our comment pages.

The race speech is, in my opinion, one of the defining speeches we have seen this century, and is already being talked about in those terms on the BBC, who do not throw around accolades like that very often.

I agree with your comments about leadership and "qualifications"

Those that think leadership is about being experienced, go to Iraq and tell that to the 20 year old officers who lead our troops into danger every day.

Unfortunately, the sense I get is that the Hillary lady is going to work her black magic and snatch the nomination, back room style, before the convention - and then attempt to make obama take the VP slot.

But, in the unlikely story that is America, there is nothing false about hope! After all, JFK and Teddy Roosevelt made it to the White House by appealing to exactly the same values as Obama.

So there.

The expert speaks ... again

Me in The Scotsman:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Catholic-couple-win-first-round.3862907.jp

Barack and the Vice Presidency?

Barack Obama's campaign to win the Democratic nomination for President of the United States was given another boost when he won another state over the weekend.

Admittedly Wyoming is the least populous state in the union, but his comfortable margin of victory, 61% to 38%, has heartened his supporters after his rival Senator Hillary Clinton won three key states last week.

Senator Obama took seven of the twelve delegates Wyoming sends to the Democratic party nominating convention in August.

Both campaigns are looking to the remaining contests.

Mississippi Democrats will choose a candidate tomorrow, with Senator Obama expected to win comfortably.

The next major state to decide will then be Pennsylvania on April 22nd.

Many party activists, alarmed at the prospect of a bitter and acrimonious fight all the way to the convention, are pushing the candidates to compromise and come together on a President/Vice President ticket.

A Newsweek poll found 69% of Democrats are now in favour of a combined "Dream Team" ticket, though the poll did not specify which candidate would run as President.

The Republican party nomination has already been won by Senator John McCain.

Senator Obama has a lead over his rival in pledged delegates but neither candidate can now win outright without the support of the super-delegates.

The 795 super-delegates can vote for whoever they want.

All Democratic Congressmen, state Governors and former and current office holders, along with members of the Democratic National Committee, are super-delegates.

Yesterday former President Bill Clinton talked up the prospect of a Clinton/Obama ticket.

"He would win the urban areas and the upscale voters, and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was President," he said while campaigning in Mississippi yesterday.

"If you put those two things together, you'd have an almost unstoppable force."

Three times in the past week the Clinton camp has made it clear it would be willing to accept Senator Obama as a Vice Presidential candidate.

"You won't see me as a Vice Presidential candidate," was his response.

"I'm running for President. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count."

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7083.html