Excellent article in yesterday's Guardian about the parlianmentary standards commissioner being hounded from her job - for the full text please go to
www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4289488,00.html
Here are some selected highlights.
'Who guards the guardians? Ask Geoffrey Robinson MP, tribune of the people. The final act of his scandalous career was marked by a full debate in the House of Commons yesterday. His answer would have to be: Tom Bower, journalist, and Elizabeth Filkin, parliamentary commissioner for standards. Between them, they nailed Robinson's multiple inability to separate public interest from private gain. Ah, but who throttles the guard who guards the guardians? That's a question to which Ms Filkin will be interested to find the answer. Perhaps, with the purring ruthlessness of the establishment, it has already been delivered.
But some murky contrivances are shameful, none more so than the humiliation of Ms Filkin, and the campaign by faceless politicians, under the direction of unaccountable Commons bigwigs, to prepare for her ejection from the job at which she has been a brilliant success.
The complaint, more often than not, is that private interests touching on public roles have not been declared or, occasionally, have been outright indefensible. The commissioner's weapon is investigation, on which she reports to a committee of other MPs who then decide what shall be done.'
I'm sure you all recognise the patterns here. Question - who guards local govenrment and elected members?
Did anyone see Question Time on BBC1 last night? The First Minister Henry McLeish is under scrutiny over a dubious financial state of affairs and whilst not accused of directly benfiting has had to apologise and agree to a full debate in the Scottish Parliament next week. Putting under a microscope does have an effect and I'd be glad when that happens in Richmond. If everything is hunky dory then everyone will be happy and councillors can be freed of suspicion. I'm sure it irks the honest and the competent to be tarred with the same brush. Go to www.bbc.co.uk/questiontime for more details and yes, a mixed reaction about trial by television.
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