Just seen this on The Times website.
THE attorney-general, Baroness Scotland, has sparked anger among colleagues by insisting on the use of a chauffeur-driven Jaguar — a privilege usually reserved for a handful of senior cabinet ministers.
WTF? This is the woman who has just been fined £5000 for breaking her own law, before dismissing it as a 'technicality'. She's the Government's chief lawyer, and in any normal country she would have stepped down quietly when she was found out, expressed regret, and that would have been it.
But no - she is now demanding a chauffeur-driven Jaguar because (I assume) the Rover she gets with the job isn't good enough.
A source close to the attorney-general said last week that she had been expected by officials to inherit the car of her predecessor, Lord Goldsmith, who had the use of a more modest Rover 75.
“However, she insisted she wanted a Jaguar,” said the source. “Paul Jenkins was very upset about it. There was a heated discussion, but in the end he just said that they may as well give it to her.”
I am utterly astonished. Not just at the sheer neck of the woman, who should be grateful she isn't going to prison for her 'technical' offence, as you can be sure a nasty old private-sector employer would be. But also at the grasping materialistic greediness of it all. It's all to do with rank, apparently. She isn't in the cabinet (who get Jaguars automatically with their position), but she is of cabinet rank. She is entitled to a Jag. How this is any more attractive than Dwayyne Buttocks, Assistant Sales Manager, Eastern Region, wanting an upgrade to his company motor from a 318 to a 325 so he can look more important, is a mystery to me. It's a pathetic wankfest when junior managers do it, and it's doubly pathetic when the Attorney-General is doing it. They are doing everything they can to force us onto public transport in the name of Green Ishoos, while themselves bickering over who gets the most polluting car. It's like Animal Farm all over again. It's a bloody car, for God's sake. It's not important or interesting. And I thought seeking meaningless prestige was something the Labour Party were dead against.
Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said the government was spending more on ministerial cars than on monitoring air pollution. “Ministers should have to justify why they have a car at all. This is all rather tacky and redolent of the fag-end of the government where some ministers are more interested in status and baubles and what they can get for themselves rather than serving the country.”
Quite.
What do we have to do to be rid of these grubby parasites?
On the bright side, all we have to do is wait.
ReplyDeleteNot that much longer, either.
Entitlement is the malaise of our generation. Everyone has rights, no-one has responsibilities. And accountability is simply a word to be mouthed at opportune moments. All traits that are visible on the humblest housing estate in Britain, and exemplified in spades by our so-called ruling elite.
There was a time when Labour had some relevance, and achieved much to better the lot of the average working man. A long time ago, now, and in a far less decadent and greedy society. This last government has, to me, demonstrated nothing but envy and vulgar venality. They sneer at the "overprivileged toffs" on the blue benches, while grabbing at all the status, cash and vast property portfolios they can. Then vandalise our history and traditions in an attempt to give legitimacy to their demented-magpie grasping nouveau-riche mindset. They despise the people who took them to power in the first place as being beneath their notice, and refuse to even listen to their opinions. The electorate, in short, were simply a step up to the trough in which they have been gorging ever since. And the country is just a convenient place to practise their amoral and soulless brand of social experimentation.
At heart, I bet there isn't a one of them who wouldn't give his left bollock (or alternative body part in the case of the dreadful, humourless, right-on sisterhood) to have been born as landed gentry.
Yes, I am angry. Swear out loud at the TV angry, every time one of these self-serving pricks tries to justify their latest excursion into practices that frankly should be prosecutable. Or the vapid, empty PC policies they pay lip service to because they actually have no idea how to run a tea-trolley, never mind a country.
Hope springs eternal, but even if the next government has good intentions of reversing some of the damage, it's going to be a long and painful process. Perhaps they could start by trying to earn some genuine respect from the people.
That, Sir, was a classic.
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