[Previous entry: "april showers"] [Next entry: "after midnight timewarp"]

03/23/2010: ""Taxi for labour" - reveals much more than it would appear!"

the "taxi for hire" scandal that has broken tonight and revealed three ex labour ministers, advertising themselves "for hire" has opened up a whole can of worms, much more damaging to the labour party, than the three simple exclusions from the party.

byers, hewitt and hoon, suspended:
byers is a fierce critic of gordon brown - attacking him back in 2008 he slated gordon brown for "putting labour party interests before the country"
hewitt and hoon were ex ministers behind last year's failed leadership coup.

the fact that all three had top jobs lined up and they are all standing down at the next election AND they had all damaged gordon brown in the past, is bad enough - but to have all three suddenly stained in the press and then dragged through the mud in secret recordings is too much of a coincidence.
all three have been suspended from the labour party - which will clearly tarnish them in the eyes of future business employers - very damaging to them.

this story reveals media bias towards the labour party:
it proves nothing, i can hear the labour party supporters saying now... lets see then shall we;

News International is the majority shareholder of BSkyB and James Murdoch is CEO - sky news is no fan of the conservatives, despite the sun coming out in favour of the conservatives. sky news regularly has daily mirror correspondants commenting on "the papers" attacking the conservatives.

the times worked with channel 4 on this story - the story broke by the times on sunday, at a time when the unite union striking with ba and the unite union giving money to the labour party, MPs and labour prospective parliamentary candidates, was clearly damaging labour - monday on sky news, not a mention of the unite union's donations to labour or its mps or labour parliamentary candidates!

the program was shown on channel 4 tonight (monday) showing ex labour ministers who have attacked gordon brown being caught out selling themselves in secret recordings.
according to the sky news correspondant, the parliamentary labour party meeting (before the show went on air) there were demands by labour backbenchers, that some form of action be taken.
according to sky news after the program was aired, "they had meetings and discussions and felt action had to be taken" - resulting in the suspension of the three mps from the labour party in the commons. remember this little bit

- on the bbc, nick robinson's blog has no mention of anything about this story, very little about unite donating money to labour mps, and labour parliamentary candidates, instead the bbc website insists that last thursday the most popular read story was the lord ashcroft reports (yeh yeh as if) seeing that on sunday, last thursdays most read story was NOT lord ashcroft affair, shows how mysterious the bbc website is when headlining "news" and viewed stories. (anything to keep ashcroft on the front page of your website eh bbc?)

the bbc do cover this "for hire story" though - stating;
"The decision was taken after Channel 4's Dispatches programme aired, showing undercover footage of various politicians who were approached by a fictional US firm looking to hire them for lobbying work.

It is understood it [the decision to suspend the three labour mps] was taken by chief whip Nick Brown, in consultation with the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Tony Lloyd, and Labour's general secretary, Ray Collins"

so the labour party top brass watched the program and then had consultations about taking action against the mps involved did they?

oh contrare!
tom bradbury for itv news (fast becoming the country's top political reporter due to his unbiased reporting) shot both sky news and bbc's website down in flames, with one simple comment:

"downing street watched the program (from 9pm to 10pm on channel 4) and at 1 minute to 10pm, i got a call from them informing me of their action in suspending the three labour mps!"

bbc and sky news reporting discussions took place, from the top brass at the labour party!
itv reveal that the call informing them of suspensions comes 30 seconds after the program has finished.

it just shows how anyone attacking gordon brown for what ever reason, is attacked themselves, sometimes months later, when the dust has settled.
what a good way to hide the uproar and bury the bad news of unite's donations to the labour party...