Friday October 14,2011 By Frederick Forsyth I SIMPLY cannot know whether the friendship between Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Adam Werritty, who seems to have sat in on a number of conferences without civil servants at the table, did our country any harm at all. Given the damage the MoD bureaucrats seem to have done us over the past 15 years, leaving the new Defence Secretary with a £38billion black hole of debt to fill, I would have thought the Downing Street cat could have done no more harm than the jobsworths. Liam Fox is noisily loyal to the first four and loathes the last two. So of course he is Target For Tonight. Another accusation is “possible conflict of interest”.As ever Freddy makes some very pertinent observations of the kind the BBC would never make. B&A
WHERE TO FIND THE REAL SLEAZE SCANDAL
Nevertheless the combined Left is going for Dr Fox hammer and tongs and the principal charge seems to be “an inappropriate friendship”. On that subject my memory strays back a few years.
In the run-up to the 1997 election Labour’s Robin Cook was on the opposition front bench going on and on about Tory sleaze. At the time he was sleeping with his mistress in Pimlico while pretending he had a rock-solid marriage with Margaret in Edinburgh. After May 1, 1997 he became foreign secretary. So the man in charge of the Secret Intelligence Service was sleeping with a lady who had not been security vetted.
Years later our comprehensively useless deputy prime minister John Prescott, privy to every Cabinet secret, was having an affair with his diary secretary while pretending to be loyal to wife Pauline in Kingston-upon-Hull.
And when it comes to a certain Mandelson P and unusual hobnobbing don’t even get me started. Then the slimy Chris Huhne was, before the last election, telling the good folk of Eastleigh how passionate he was about wife, family, home and the old values. All the while he was tupping his bisexual mistress, who herself was cheating on her lesbian partner. (I think I need a Bisodol. Or at least a road map. I mean, who does what, where, with which and to whom?) By the by Huhne is now Energy Secretary and privy to many secrets. Of course the British Left nowadays is anti-God, anti-Queen, anti-UK, anti-USA and fiercely pro political correctness and the EU.
As it happens there is a bloc of 20 to 30 peers on the payroll of the EU while sitting and voting in the Lords. They purport to be in receipt of EU pensions after serving in Brussels.
(But serving whom?) But these “pensions” are in fact retainers because, unique among “pensions”, they are conditional on continued support by the receivers.
Any perceived reservations and the “pensions” can be terminated. Thus the EU “pensioners” are in fact active lobbyists but refuse to declare conflict of interest.
The latest outing of this bloc was to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the real EU constitution on its transfer to budding superstate. The motion passed in the Lords by nine votes, carried in effect by the Brusselspaid lobby group.
Compared with the real sleaze going on in high places the Fox-Werritty friendship is a storm in a teacup
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he alone can deliver the country’s promised deficit cuts as European leaders turn their attention to his government’s ability to help contain the debt crisis.
In an interview published in Corriere della Sera today, Berlusconi ruled out early elections and said the current legislature in Rome will last until 2013. He said the European Central Bank’s support will only be maintained if his government follows through on measures to rein in debt and promote growth.
“Only I and my government can achieve this reform program for 18 months, which is why there is no way for me to stand aside,” the Italian leader said in the interview.
The European Union’s latest package of measures failed to stem a rise in Italian borrowing costs, with an Oct. 28 bond sale sending yields to a euro-era record and denting the euphoria triggered after the EU summit. Group of 20 leaders will convene in Cannes, France, this week after an agreement to bolster Europe’s rescue fund to 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) and persuaded bondholders to incur 50 percent losses on Greek debt
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-30/berlusconi-defiant-as-europe-s-focus-shifts-to-reforms-in-italy.html
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