Hoisted by his own petard
It is not without a frisson of schadenfreude that I read of Ken Livingstone whinging and whining at being suspended by an unelected group of busybodies for his offensive comments to a Jewish reporter.
Of course it is wrong that the wishes of millions of electors can be overturned by this organisation! But who is responsible for them and their ilk? – why people like “cuddly” Ken and who are usually in the forefront of politically correct lunacy.
How hilarious that instead of a punishing a right wing politician for expressing valid concerns about religious extremism, their first high profile case was against the sort of politician who was responsible for bringing them into existence.
Maybe the scales will lift from Ken’s eyes and we will see him writing articles for the “Campaign Against Political Correctness” website which does an excellent job highlighting the increasingly bizarre world in which we live.
Of course it is wrong that the wishes of millions of electors can be overturned by this organisation! But who is responsible for them and their ilk? – why people like “cuddly” Ken and who are usually in the forefront of politically correct lunacy.
How hilarious that instead of a punishing a right wing politician for expressing valid concerns about religious extremism, their first high profile case was against the sort of politician who was responsible for bringing them into existence.
Maybe the scales will lift from Ken’s eyes and we will see him writing articles for the “Campaign Against Political Correctness” website which does an excellent job highlighting the increasingly bizarre world in which we live.
posted by David Davies AM at 10:56 AM
1 Comments:
Congratulations on the new arrival David.
First off I tend to agree with Ken that his remark was not offensive. He was responding to the hack's statement that he was simply doing his job. When someone employs a variant on the 'I was only following orders' defence, it's a legitimate comparison.
Secondly, what on Earth is this Standards Commission's remit? They seem to be like some new version of the spanish inquisition. If its remit extended to Wales you would have had a field day! If a councillor is on the fiddle, or saying things calculated to arouse racial hatred then the Police are the ones to call. Equally councillors, unlike AMs or MPs are subject to the normal laws of libel. The entire model code of conduct is, variously, vague, ridiculous, unnecessary or intrusive. It is, if councillors blogs are any reflection, generating thousands of frivolous, medacious or politically motivated complaints. It should be confined to the scrapheap and those provisions (if any) which need to be preserved should be brought within the ordinary civil or criminal law. The only good thing about Ken's case is that it has brought this problem to public attention. An acquaintance of mine who was elected as a county councillor for example was forced to step down from his local community coucil because he was barred from speaking or voting on any planning matter the community council had considered. This is bloody silly. Imagine if the same rule applied to people who were both AMs and also MPs!
Of course there is another positive aspect if you put yourself in the position of the Regional Secretary of the Greater London Labour Party. Their biggest electoral asset now has nothing better to do for the next month than campaign like fury for the London local electons in May with no danger of being distracted by 'irrelevancies' such as Tube strikes, olympic arrangements or the myriad of other contingencies that can throw the best key campaigner grid off balance.
Hurrah for Citizen Ken. Rant over, & congratulations again.
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