Sunday 24 May 2009

MPs expenses: a Eurosceptic conspiracy?

Nadine Dorries is one of the louder and only semi-corrupted Tory MPs, but she's not taking it lying down - she told Radio 4 that she fears MPs are on the edge of suicides, and that it's a 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt (for which Cameron told her publicly to shut up).

So far, so boring. But now she's gone after the Telegraph - and her blog has been removed at the request of that paper's lawyers. What could she have said? Well, nothing ever truly disappears on the web, so here we are, and here's an extract.

The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.

Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph.
Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough. They have set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and BNP.

A quick online check of the Barclay brothers and their antics on the Island of Sark is enough to give this part of the rumour credence.

Another rumour is that the disc was never acquired and sold by an amateur, but it was in fact a long term undercover operation run by the Telegraph for some considerable time, carefully planned and executed; and that the stories of the naive disc nabber ringing the news desk in an attempt to sell the stolen information are entirely the work of gossip and fiction.

These rumours do have some credibility given that this has all erupted during the European Election Campaign and turn out is expected to be high with protest votes, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, or should I say the Barclay brothers.

Now, if this is all a power game executed by the BBs, how would they do that?
It is a fact that these men are no fools and are in fact self-made billionaires.
I would imagine and believe that if any of this is true, they know the British psyche well enough to whip up a mood of public anger, hence the long running revelations in the DT.


She seems to think that newspaper owners try to manipulate public concern, and rule without every facing the troublesome matter of getting elected - a charge that's been true since the 18th century. It was certainly interesting that the DT didn't give Labour members any warning of what they were going to publish, but gave Cameron et al. a full day for preparation - very objective.

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