Apparently the Government has today, the eve of the long summer recess, published over 100 ministerial statements which include information such as spending on ministerial cars, the fact Blair's farewell tour cost us £1.5m and lots of other great nuggets of buried bad news.
According to the Leader of the House, Harriet "I'm a woman that is what I do" Harman, this is just a practical reality and they're not trying to hide anything at all, heaven forbid! Frankly I;m not surprised by the number of statements at all.
Over the session there have, quite literally, been 100s of hundreds of questions about costs and the like where the answer has been to say it will cost too much to answer and figures will published at the end of the year. In fact it happened this week and I guarantee the figure that were to expensive to publish on Tuesday were not too expensive to do so on Friday.
Prescott was brilliant at ignoring questions about spending and simply saying that the figure would be published at the end of the year. The modus operandi of New Labour in Parliament has always appeared to be to obfuscate the scrutiny process. If scrutiny cannot happen properly then it is possible for the Government to actively shape the message on their terms.
3 comments:
Nothing to do with your post really - assume an apoplectic rant in response to that.
I note that your ad alongside this blog post is for Clearstart, the "National Debt Helpline".
"Excellent", says this taxpayer - "I need some advice on how to stop this shower increasing the National Debt faster than Imelda in Clark's Shopping Village."
Disappointingly, it turns out that it's nothing to do with the debt rung up by our political elite at all. (Or maybe it is? It has the smell of Govt funding about it. Hnnnhh.)
Hah well spotted. I do find it amusing how Google ads get chosen sometimes. I was particularly amused the time I posted about how much the DoH was psending on NHS Direct google ads whilst carrying the ads beneath.
Dizzy, I read your blog pretty well every day and notice that you seem to have a job to do and still find time to keep very much on top to all sorts of detail that is potentially damaging to the Government.
I am wondering why Dave&Co aren't doing the same. One could argue that this is their job as the Opposition, so they should have a bit more time than you.
Perhaps Peter Hitchens is not far wrong in his 'Useless Tories' jibe.
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